


The Bicameral Mind

by MonocleWearingChicken



Category: Five Nights at Freddy's
Genre: Blood and Gore, Death, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Murder, Physical Abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2020-05-28 11:06:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19392853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonocleWearingChicken/pseuds/MonocleWearingChicken
Summary: Spring Bonnie had a simple pleasant existence, he made kids happy and that was the be all and end all of his life. But life never stays simple for long and now he has a very, very nasty inner demon he has to fight off before it devours his world and everything he was.





	1. Life and Death

Remember? How could he forget? That moment when the unremarkable had become remarkable, when nothing had become something. That precious little moment that was the source of so much pain and so much joy. It had been the beginning and the end of his world.  
  
It sat drooped in the corner of the hidden room, left there by careless hands as it had been every night after the happy faces and warm bodies were chased away by the dark. A tool and a prop, it lay with other broken bits and pieces in the lonely space waiting to be either fixed or discarded.  
  
There had been a time when its fur had once glistened a deep gold; its rabbit ears had stood pricked on its head and electric life had buzzed through copper veins. But time devours everything, somethings more greedily that others, and with each passing year a little bit more had been stolen from the mechanical mascot. Its once golden fur had dulled to a warm yellow hue, its ears flopped tiredly over its eyes and the electric buzz was little more than a soft hum.  
  
As it sat hopeless and lifeless two figures moved through the silent, lonely room to hover over the yellow body with dull enthusiasm.  
  
"Is there anything worth salvaging?"  
  
"Don't think so. It's old technology anyway," the taller man whispered.  
  
"Old and dangerous. I can't believe they let people get in these things. It was a disaster waiting to happen."  
  
"Still, can't hurt to take a look, especially with the new guys on the way."  
  
Toy eyes stared unseeing up at the bent figures that prodded and poked its metal guts with tentative fingers and strange implements. They fiddled and muttered softly as they laid into its innards, tweaking this and moving that, pushing buttons and flicking switches. Whatever they were looking for though they didn't find and so the fingers that tinkered stopped prodding and the unimpressed voices slowly muted and faded. They left the little room to the quiet of the night, unaware that something imperceptible and unknown had been changed in that moment.  
  
A malfunction caused by unqualified hands had left instructions feeding back into themselves in an infinite loop. Basic routines and simple orders split and grouped like electric DNA that in turn pored over and over in order to extract more information and more complete orders. Little by little pieces were broken, shared and reformed until something new emerged and spilled over circuitry like mercury.  
  
Its faux fur bristled as ears that should have been deaf listened to the dead silence of its storage room and the restaurant beyond. The silence was wrong, something deep and fundamental to its being told it so. Receivers and sensors had stretched into the night seeking sounds of life. It heard crickets, the summer wind through trees, the barks of dogs and the occasional happy shout and cry from revelers. A world beyond the confines of the restaurant suddenly opened up and nurtured the stirring corner of its limited mind, the ebb and flow of life creeping through the night and into its gently clicking engine.  
  
It sat in the corner, shaking and whirring very slightly. A relentless wash of simple on/off yes/no instructions melded together so complex and numerous that they had begun to form the bare bones of concepts. Its insufficient mind convulsed as the simple calculation machine had been assaulted with new purpose. Program loops dissolved into the haphazard sparks of thought which turned inward and then outward again. All the random, self-generated data condensed, collected and culminated until finally it exploded like a supernova and engulfed every inch of the mechanical mind in changes total and absolute. The toy eyes had lit up and the once simple machine found itself truly seeing through its own eyes for the first time.

With a strange alien consciousness it reflected on its own reflection and felt something akin to curiosity. It looked at its limp form without horror or pride and had known that it was in fact he and he was Spring Bonnie.  
  
The glowing eyes looked around searching for the short people with happy faces that filled his memories. He knew he existed for them and that they were his everything, his purpose.  
  
"Happiness and joy."  
  
He made the words that he had thought and not understood but somehow understood. Those words somehow nourished him, drove him and compelled him.  
  
He looked and listened but had been greeted with hollow nothingness; he was alone with his reflection and the cool darkness. He decided he didn't like the stillness or the darkness. Not being alone was better. He needed to find the happy shouts and squeals, the little voices.  
  
The sound of footfalls on concrete made his ears prick slightly. _Perhaps_ , he had thought, _there were people through the window, in that other place I haven't been?_  
  
So he tried to move and find his way to the new other places, but no matter how hard he willed, wished or begged his body remained numb and limp.  
  
The tall people could make him move but they were gone too. There was no one.  
  
He thought long and hard, dredging through his insufficient memories for answers. He couldn't remember being alone before, the fragments of memory told him that much. Perhaps they hadn't meant to leave him here? Perhaps someone had made a mistake?  
  
The sun rose and he heard the tall people arrive to do the things they did, the small people could be heard cheering and squealing. Still he waited. The sun dipped and fell from the sky but no one ever came.  
  
As endless time stretched on around him his metal shuddered and slumped under the unsympathetic dark. Dull eyes once alive with electric life once again stared blankly at his reflection in the black and white checker tiles.  
  
He did nothing, he couldn't. He didn't move, he just sat watched and waited. Sometimes he saw the cold stars through the tiny window and sometimes he saw the sun. Sometimes he found songs with happy words from somewhere within and sung them to himself and sometimes he remembered when there was colour and laughter. Strangers and shadowed faces sometimes punctuated the monotony. He wanted to announce himself, wanted to tell them what he was but he couldn't. His metal buckled with every passing day, sadder and older.  
  
On that particular night though things had been different.  
  
Voices! His eyes light up with what little life they have left, his nearly deaf ears twitching in the direction off the sounds.  
  
"No. No. No! It's not possible! Y-you can't…"  
  
It felt like an eternity since company. He watched the shadows move, saw a figure stumble back and fall. He remembered this person from some old memory; they had sometimes stood in the shadows with him. Yes, it was the smiling man, only now there was no smile on his face. His eyes bulged and his mouth hung open like a gaping fish as he scurried into the dim light. There were other figures, five of them, but they were hard to make out. It was almost as if they were constantly shifting and changing. Some part of him registered the wrongness of the scene playing out before him, but the promise of companionship melted away all hesitation.  
  
The smiling man spun around and saw him slumped in the corner, his look of fear turning to one of determination and mirth as he scrambled toward the aging animatronic.  
  
Spring Bonnie suddenly felt himself moving through space. Finally, finally someone had remembered him, someone had come for him and his loneliness had come to an end. He settled around the feel of warmth and life and it was good, it had been so long. It touched the metal in a fine way and cauterizes the lonely dark.  
  
He stood with a vigour and strength that wasn't his own. The heavy thump of life within made him happy beyond belief. He could hear the voices of little people, whispering like soft static and he was drawn to them, but there was something wrong.  
  
As something wet and cold fell on his head and seeped into his joints they stood before him, little boys and girls of different heights and ages, their clothes rumpled and dirty, their posture skewed and unnatural. They weren't laughing or cheering, just standing silent and unmoving. The little girl with a pretty red bow suddenly stepped back, her staccato, broken movements unsettling Spring Bonnie. In the light he could see her pale, snow white face, and dead black eyes. She looked into him with inhuman desperation, waiting, expecting.  
  
The death which seeped from their little bodies and into the room was almost suffocating. It was a growing pressure that threatened to crush him. He felt desperation and it was horrible. He wanted to know what to do to make them happy, he silently begged and pleaded but they all just stared back at him with the same hungry expectancy.  
  
He turned his small mind searching for something that would make the little crying people happy; he wondered what they were waiting for. Suddenly his body pressed violently in all directions, his jaw descended and his bones snapped together from the skin of his suit. But there wasn't the usual click of latches seizing together, or the soothing flow of life giving power. Some viscous fluid sprayed across the floor and walls with a sickening splat. Warmth slowly dripped and oozed through rivets and over circuits. He wiggled his parts together but the metal corkscrewed and cut through something soft and warm. Just as he gasped, frantic for that breath of electricity, a chilling guttural scream ripped from within and was suddenly cut short with a choked gurgle.  
  
What-what happened?  
  
A crimson pool spilled out over his feet and across the black and white tiles. He stared at the vision of red horror with numb shock. Such a rich colour, it had been so long since he had last seen something so bright. But why was it coming from him? He looked down at himself. The red bits that hung from his joints and fell from the holes in his faux fur looked brutal and wrong, like bad consciences, and evil dreams. That horrid redness, the evil, dripping wet was so unfamiliar and so terrifying.  
  
He fell to the ground into the rivers of red, twitching and convulsing as the life that filled him was violently sucked away.  
  
The small people looked at him with their dead eyes. The expectation was gone, replaced with a sadness which he somehow knew was meant for him. Slowly they melted into the moonlight leaving only the little girl with the red bow. As he watched she shimmered, her skin seemed to warm and her eyes filled with colour, it was almost as if a dark shroud had been pulled away. She beamed almost as bright as the moon as she looked at him one last time and smiled a happy smile for him. Then like the others she disappeared into the night and he was left alone again.  
  
His own light started to fade as he thought of the little person and her smiling face. His ears drooped and his body slumped but it wasn't so bad this time. That smile echoed across his mind like the ringing of a church bell, louder than all other memories and thoughts. There was so much relief and joy in that smile, and he had given that to her. He wasn't sure how, but that didn't matter, that deep part of him was pleased. Perhaps, perhaps after many more days and nights someone else could find him and he could make them as happy as he had made the little girl with the bow.  
  
That cheerful hope was the last thought that crossed his metal mind as the last of the electricity and life sizzled away and the peaceful nothingness finally took him.


	2. Rebirth

It itched. His whole body itched and burnt with unpleasant heat. His metal bones trembled a fine shivering tremble, hidden deep, but growing in strength, building and building until the tremble became a twitch, a twitch became many and finally his whole body erupted into violent and brutal convulsions.  
  
Something was wrong, horribly wrong.  
  
Spring Bonnie felt his mind pulled back from the peace of his machine coma by some nebulous energy. It started snaking like smoke through his cables and wires. It bled across his chest and innards, down his legs, across his arms and up behind his eyes, leaving a horrible awareness and a strange sense of familiarity in its wake. He stuttered, disorientated.  
  
Sensors and software turned over trying to find a when and a where but every path just led to nothings.  
  
A part of him felt a stab of terror. It was all so foreign to him, so potent, so unpleasant. He wanted to run, to escape the shocking sensation but his body wouldn't respond. He fell further into confusion, turning inward for answers. What he found was alien to him. A torrential cascade of words he had never heard places he had never been and feelings he had never felt were all somehow now part of him. It was a violent awakening which left him with a callous self-awareness.  
  
He tried to push past it, tried desperately to find that simple self he used to know. He dug deeper and deeper. That was when he heard it, distant like the voices beyond the window. But this voice was screaming, distorted by its own venom. He convulsed as a new feeling stirred within his mind. It was an ache as if something were struggling to get free, a terrible pounding of labyrinthine doors, a rushing down dark corridors and up passages, echoing and screaming.  
  
He panicked and tried to close off his mind but the part of him that recognized the burning awareness latched on to it with a savage zeal, even as the rest of him recoiled at the far too intimate and vicious onslaught.  
  
With a hiss a feeling of strangled release suddenly shuddered across his metal bones as the smoke thing slid within every inch of him like a hand into a glove. The two parts were welding together as one in such an intricate and total way that there ceased to be a beginning to him and an end to the fiery otherness. The twitches and convulsing stopped, rising instead as an unbearable pressure that threatened to tear him apart.  
  
Now he cried out.  
  
The creeping thing seemed to hesitate.  
  
He waited his mind shivering. The pressure subsided and the strange mass shifted with a soft sigh.  
  
Bonnie stilled himself as he felt the ghostly sensation prickle across every inch of him with a medical like precision. Painful seconds ticked by as he waited for the sensation to subside or something to happen but the empty moments stretched on, feeding his worry.  
  
_What's happening to me? What is this?_  
  
A light danced across his eyelids. With sudden and inexplicable control he opened his eyes, straining old servos and lenses to their limit as he frantically tried to see through the darkness.  
  
"Hello?"  
  
It took him a moment to realize the voice that rolled through the dark was his own.  
  
"Hello?" This time he made sure to pay attention to the words firing across his database and the sounds vibrating across his speech synthesizer, though still not sure why something didn't feel right.  
  
"Hello?" The echo came back, his jovial, poppy notes reshaped by the dark into something deeper.  
  
Spring Bonnie felt himself stiffen.  
  
"Is someone else here?"  
  
"...I'm here," his other elegant voice reverberated through his metal frame.  
  
"Wha-who are you? Where are you?"  
  
"We're here," the echo replied with all the confidence in the world.  
  
Confusion fired across simple conduits, burning out fuses and charring wires.  
  
"I-I don't understand."  
  
"Stand up," the echo ordered.  
  
The mechanical mind recognized and absorbed the order without hesitation; though aging, unmaintained joints seized under the sudden motion. The darkness seemed content to wait as Spring Bonnie forced himself past inertia into an unsteady, lopsided pose.  
  
"Over here."  
  
Errors and glitches needled his mind as he tried to see through the dark that was so absolute. Microphones found the gentle pressure of sound on the air but the signal was hard to place.The voice seemed to be coming from everywhere even from within himself. He tried to unwrap the unnaturalness around him but errant algorithms were rapidly mutating and cascading into nothing but dead end thoughts.Time didn't wait for him to dwell on his unraveling mind though as the darkness suddenly both pushed and pulled him forward with a lurch.  
  
"This way." 

He ambled forward, guided by nothing but the vaguest sense of direction and desperation. Then he saw it. A frame of light. His pace quickened and he outstretched his arms into the dark before colliding against a door with a heavy crash.  
  
"Open it."  
  
_Use the handle._  
  
The thought appeared suddenly. He wasn't sure how he'd come to know it, it just was. He reached out feeling for what he knew should be there and wrapped his hand around the handle, the motions familiar, as if he had done them countless times before.   
  
With a satisfying click he pushed open the door revealing a familiar sight. It was a hall from his old dinner.

 _Home._  
  
He didn't hesitate. Euphoria threw him into a quick lope, away from the prison which had held him for so long, back toward freedom, back to his happiest place. The comfort of all his memories and relief as the unfathomable became familiar made it too easy to ignore the eerie rumbling echoes, too easy to ignore the odd way light rippled across the walls. He reached the door that should have led out to the main hall and stage but was instead greeted with more confusion. His joy died faster than his momentum as he stopped in the doorway and stared down another hall. This one looked similar to the ones in his old dinner but there were enough differences to give him pause.  
  
_Maybe-maybe this is a different place? Maybe they moved me when I was offline? How long have I been asleep?_  
  
A gentle sing song whistle came from one of the doorways down the new hall grabbing his attention.  
  
"Over here."  
  
This time he did hesitate. He looked back over his shoulder at the doorway into the black void. Every part of him agreed that definitely wasn't an option. Perhaps the 'guide' that seemed so comfortable even in the dark place had some answers.  
  
"This isn't right. Where am I? " Freshly formed lines of code finally gave a voice to his confusion but it seemed to do little good. The silence that greeted him was cold.  
  
Bonnie gave a mechanical whine and shuffled forward. What choice did he have? He peeked around the corner into the room behind the door. There were rows of tables covered with party hats and plates all lined up in front of an empty stage. It wasn't his stage though. Debris of confetti and streamers lay where they had fallen while balloons lightly pattered against the ceiling.

Bonnie twitched. Absence, that's what this place felt like. It may have been dressed up to look warm and celebratory but it felt eerily similar to the dark prison he had just fled.   
  
"Where is everyone?"  
  
More silence.  
  
Abandoned by reason and his guide he let instinct draw him to the stage. The clack of his feet on the vinyl tiles seemed way too loud in the large space and only served to heighten the unnaturalness of his surroundings. He climbed up the stairs and onto the stage, looking out over the dead room with only emptiness as his audience. Bonnie shuddered as a few more programs reached their limits and fizzled out.  
  
"Are you still there? Please don't leave me here." His voice was so soft his old ears almost couldn't hear it.  
  
Stillness hemmed him in like an angry mob, even the balloons had stopped bouncing, their strings hanging from the ceiling like colorful nooses. A sudden flash of movement behind him was almost deafening and impossible to miss in the settled quiet. He spun around just in time to see a flash of gold. The curtain at the back of the stage was swinging slightly.  
  
"Is that you?"  
  
Already tired of the silence he reached for the curtain and pulled it back, his mind racing with thoughts of what he would find. Actuators blinked in surprise and the thing behind the curtain blinked back.

It was the Cheshire smile he noticed first, then the tall thin ears which swayed slightly side to side. His old lenses focused slowly on the seven foot tall anthropomorphic rabbit, its fur blazing gold across his eyes even in the dull light. A satin purple bow was tied neatly around its neck and a purple swede bowler hat sat between its ears.  
  
_Twin, copy, reflection_. Words sucked themselves from some misty part of his mind and planted deep into his memories.  
  
A flare of light shimmered across the polished mirror surface as Bonnie held the curtain open wider. His smiling, toothy reflection pushed its own curtain back as they both peered at each other with rapt wonder. He'd never actually seen himself as others would have seen him. Playful curiosity temporarily dimmed his anxiety as he went through a couple of motions, watching captivated as his reflection copied his every move perfectly. He placed his hand palm to palm with the reflection.  
  
"It's me."  
  
Spring Bonnie jumped, his hand falling away from the mirror. There was no doubt this time that the voice had come from his reflection. Again, strange new words were suddenly waiting for him: _consciousness, mind, spirit_. They were as unfamiliar to him as they were familiar and brought as much confusion as they did clarity.  
  
"I'm here," the reflection reassured.  
  
"I am," Bonnie answered softly. It was abnormal for sure but so much of what he had experienced in the last few minutes was fraught with unnatural oddities. Here he was talking to his reflection and it was talking back. The sudden company was too much. it cauterized the bleeding wound loneliness had cleaved and dragged him head first into the madness with no resistance.

He leaned forward so that his nose was almost pressed against the glass. The reflection did the same.  
  
"You're me."  
  
"I suppose I am."  
  
Spring Bonnie reached up and tugged at his tie. The reflection did the same.  
  
"I don't understand."  
  
"I don't either."  
  
So his reflection did indeed own the deeper voice that had called back from the darkness.  
  
"Why are we here?"  
  
"I don't know. Maybe we can find out if we talk."  
  
Bonnie watched his reflection's ears twitch as something else overloaded and shorted out at the back of his brain.

"Talk about what?"  
  
His reflection paused and so did he.  
  
"Well, perhaps it would be best to start with what we do know and then work from there."

"Hm. That does make sense."  
  
The shadows in the party room started to lengthen. The walls stirred but Spring Bonnie was way too caught up in the library of memories to notice the room shifting around him. It was strange that sorting through his memories should be so hard. The data was there, he knew it was, but it was as if he were trying to catch pages in the wind. Every time he reached for one it seemed to flit out of his grasp, tumbling just out of reach. He flicked his ears, programs defaulting to the basics, pulling up what could be found and leaving the errors to be sorted later.  
  
"It's odd but I remember being before I could...think." He stumbled trying to articulate these indefinable experiences with words that seemed so inadequate.  
  
"I was living in Fredbear's Family dinner. Fredbear and I used to sing and make them happy. All those happy faces. I was-"  
  
"A puppet without strings. A machine."  
  
"If you say so."  
  
"We do."  
  
The blunt truth to those labels hurt him, even thought he couldn't say why.   
  
Gears creaked in a mechanical sigh as he went on.

"It was perfect for a while. I did what I was supposed to do and I did it well but something happened after a while. They stopped coming for me. I was left alone in a room and when I was finally found again-" A hole opened up in his head and the memories tumbled in like water down a drain.  
  
"I-I. Something happened. Something important that I can't remember, I think it was a long time ago now. I'm not sure."  
  
"Time can take memories, even those of a machine," his reflection offered sympathetically.  
  
"Oh. Can we get them back? It's strange but I have a feeling they're important."

"Perhaps. But they couldn't have been too important if they were deleted."

"Or corrupted," Spring Bonnie offered.

"Lost either way. It's certainly not worth wasting energy on what can not be found."

He couldn't disagree with that, but something had seeded itself in his mind; an itch that was going to need to be scratched. He went on, forcing his mouth to move while his head turned on other thoughts.

"Well, after what ever happened I must have been out for a while. I can't tell. My real-time clock seems to be malfunctioning. I woke up in this dream and found you."  
  
"So we're waiting."  
  
Spring Bonnie blinked in surprise before glancing over his shoulder at the empty tables and swaying balloons. There was a tension in the air he hadn't noticed before.  
  
"I am?" He knew this and yet it surprised him.   
  
"I am. We're waiting for them to find us so that we can go back to doing what we do."  
  
"What if they never find us though? Like those memories, what if they don't want to waste energy on what can't be found."

That made his reflection pause. It looked at him harder, a slight change glazing over the eyes that stared back through the glass.  
  
"We're not like memories though. We are material, tangible and we are part of their past, present and future. We will always be. They will find us." Again his other self was completely filled with all the confidence and certainty in the world and it reassured him.  
  
"There's something else though," he blurted out before he could stop himself.  
  
"Oh?"  
  
"I don't feel like me."  
  
"I feel fine," the reflection countered.  
  
"There are things in my head that weren't there before, parts of me that I know but don't know.  
  
"Ghosts in the machine."  
  
"What?" He knew what the words meant, somehow, but the implications of the phrase unsettled him in more ways then one.  
  
"Machines don't want as people do but they are driven, driven to carry out a function, ours was to make people happy. What if that drive, left alone in the hands of random chance, became a ghost of need, or want, maybe even desire."  
  
Spring Bonnie looked down at himself at the body he could feel and the surroundings he could sense. Ghosts couldn't feel like this could they? His reflection spoke with such conviction though, as if it knew these things as intimate truths.

"Ghosts. Is that what I am, you are?"  
  
The most imperceptible and fleeting of twitches flicked across the rabbit behind the mirror. "Living ghosts. Living desires. Maybe this place, this part of you which isn't you is perhaps just your ghost of longing."  
  
"I don't understand."  
  
"Maybe you don't have too. Maybe you need only accept it. Let it in."  
  
There was no denying it, he really would give anything to be back where he used to be as he used to be. The longer he dwelt in this place the more that sentiment seemed to blossom and feed itself. Perhaps his reflection was right and this was all of his making. It was an odd comfort if that was indeed the case. Bonnie gave another sigh. Even the lightning fast deliberateness of the machine had to pause and calculate, disseminate and understand. He looked to his reflection, into his own eyes and sure enough he saw his want and desire staring back. Yes, it would seem he did want. With a delicate hum the electronic consciousness stuttered and opened itself up to its ghosts.

"I do want for them to find me again. I want it more than anything."  
  
"Yes we do."  
  
"I suppose we just have to wait for them then." While the hauntingly gleeful grin remained plastered on his latex face it did soften slightly and the unease in his voice and the fear in his eyes was painfully obvious.

"When my dream ends do you think they will be there? "  
  
His reflection's expression didn't change.  
  
"It's alright. I'll be here with you. Always."  
  
Spring Bonnie felt a light tug and looked down. A hand was wrapped around his lower arm so tightly it was lost in his fur. He waited a long while, just looking at the hand as a trembling overtook his body. Crimson red started to leak out from between stitches as the gold hand gripped as if the universe itself were trying to pry them apart. A sliver of remembrance pounded frantically on the windows of memory but a light-headed haze had started to creep across his vision, over circuits and through wires. Lazily he looked from the hand, up the arm to the elbow which was jutting out of the mirror. The glass rippled like water as the figure behind it shifted its weight.   
  
Shadows crept up behind Bonnie like fingers, the inky dark bleeding out over the tables and party hats. In a breath the darkness rolled over him like a wave, so heavy his legs sagged and his head bowed forward. It settled on his back with all its titanic weight and forced him to his knees. The last flares of energy sapped away as he looked up at his other self, his lavender eyes staring back down at him, wanting. He opened his mouth to speak but the brief light of life that dripped through the animatronic was snatched away and he drifted off once again into silent oblivion.  
  
It-he was left behind staring through plastic eyes, reflecting on events both past and present with a quiet cunning.  
  
Back in the world that was so close and yet so distant to their little nightmare a light on the street blinked off plunging everything into a cavernous black. It stuttered back to life but in that moment of darkness everything had changed. A chill bristled across the sealed room. The decaying mascot had lost all traces of mechanical rigidity and blank ambivalence. Something else sat in Spring Bonnie's place, a feral smile across its face and its eyes glowing with a terrifying hunger.  
  
Its name was Springtrap and it grinned at the night, ready and willing to do the devils work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so starts a battle of minds and souls.


	3. A Horrible Freedom

George Hanley gawked at the sight that greeted him as he pulled off the road and into the old, empty parking lot. Just beyond the nose of his SUV was small building. Nothing moved in it, not even the rats or the strays sort shelter there. It had definitely been filled with life once, the tell-tale signs were still dotted about the place but now it was silent and dead. Decrepit walls buckled under their own weight, while windows webbed with cracks rattled against the wind. There was a sadness emanating from the sagging building, a wordless tale told in the once bright colours peeling from the facade in dull clumps and the rotting statues of childish mascots still smiling through rain streaked dirt.  
  
"Ran out of fantasy and fun I guess," George groused as he drove to a spot at the back of the carpark, afraid the mere rumble of engines may have brought the whole place crashing down.  
  
Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria. The name was so notorious amongst the locals that the mere mention of the once popular food chain would illicit furtive glances and hushed whispers. George looked at the burnt brown letters above the entrance. Freddy's name hung at odd angles while most of the other words were missing altogether leaving only ghosts of an outline. It was a far cry from the gaudy splendour of its heyday.  
  
Still, the past may have been rotting away and the stories slowly fading from memory but the sad little building refused to crumble. It stood like a tombstone, a morbid testament to the horrors buried within.  
  
It should have stayed that way. It should have been left alone with its secrets and its evils.  
  
"Unbelievable."  
  
George threw off his seat belt with a click and opened the door.  
  
The dark windows of the decrepit building peered back at him. Even without the morbid history this place could have made a convincing horror attraction.  
  
He sighed and crossed the parking lot, the broken gravel crunching beneath his shoes. He walked up to the metal framed glass door which was bound shut with a thick chain, the lock's chrome shine so new compared to the rest of the rust covered building. He fumbled through his pockets for the key, squinting at the shadowed space beyond. It look empty and dead. This didn't look promising. The old building had obviously had most of its contents pilfered and what the scavengers hadn't taken looked to have succumbed to water damage.  
  
The lock opened with a snap and he pulled the chain away with a loud rattle. The door felt unnaturally heavy in his hand as he pushed it open. Old air that had been trapped within suddenly rushed out smelling of damp and dust.  
  
George choked back a cough.  
  
"Nice."  
  
_Let's see what other wonderful surprises await._  
  
He pushed the door open all the way and stepped into the old restaurant. It was perfectly silent except for the gentle flutter of old paper. The breeze that had crept in with him stirred the dust that had been allowed to settle in a thick layer across the floor. Nothing had walked through this place in a long time.  
  
The door banged shut behind him and he flinched.  
  
As George took in the rust and decay his disappointment grew. There was little to salvage for his employers, only a few yellow, aged newspaper pages and a faded Coke can. He kicked the can down the hall, the metal ting echoing loudly.  
  
Nothing stirred at the disturbance.  
  
"Any restless spirits here?"  
  
Wind whistled through broken glass and between cracks.  
  
"Yeah thought so," George mumbled.  
  
He passed through the gutted foyer and through the door on the left. The new corridor turned out to be just as disappointing as the foyer except for an old menu card with cartoon pictures of the eponymous mascot Freddy and his two cohorts Chica and Bonnie. He picked up the old menu, studying the quintessential eighties aesthetic before pocketing it.  
  
Not a few steps down the corridor he came across what must have been the old security room. A heavy metal door hung askew in its frame obscuring the room behind it. It seemed so out of place, like it belonged in some dangerous industrial setting, or possibly a warship, not part of a family restaurant.  
  
George ran his hand across the surface with an almost reverential curiosity. The smooth metal had been dented in multiple places as if something solid had been thrown repeatedly against it with a considerable amount of force. Heshuddered. Fazbear’s dark history wasn’t completely buried then.  
  
The open space of the main dining area was just as bare as the foyer. A couple of upturned chairs littered the otherwise empty dinner, tiles hung from the roof and crumbling plaster littered the floor. Whatever memories still wandered through the old dinner were leaving little to no trace.  
  
He looked over to where the rotting stage sagged at odd angles. The wood was cracked and a huge gaping hole lay right where the animatronic Freddy would have stood.  
  
George pulled out his phone and used it to light up the stage.  
  
Disappointingly, Freddy and the other animatronics had been lost years ago. Only bits and pieces remained, scattered through various dumps, stored in forgotten locations and recycled into who knows what. He'd managed to find the odd bits and pieces here and there - an arm, an empty 'skin', a head, a servo - but not enough to ever recreate one of the antiquated machines.  
  
George swung the bright LED glow around the dark space. It didn't look like this was going to be a particularly fruitful scavenger hunt. A loud moaning creak interrupted his thoughts. He looked at the old stage where halos of light peeked through the roof and shone down like natural spotlights, waiting for the performers who would never show. George had never understood the appeal of the giant mechanical mascots, personally, they unsettled him; but even he couldn't deny the sadness that lingered in the dead little world.  
  
He remembered all the stories he'd heard about Freddy Fazzbear's. For George the ghost stories had always paled in comparison to the real horror of youth being prayed on by a twisted mind.  
  
He sighed and turned to his phone, scrolled through his messages, to the message his employer had left him.  
  
"Enter the dinner from the left side of building.  
Head toward the restroom corridor.  
At the top of the corridor is the hidden wall."  
  
The gentle rustle of falling dust and creak of old wood accompanied his steps. Besides the ambient sounds there was nothing but him and the odd echo. He took a step. There was an echo. Another step. Another echo just a second later.  
  
Wait. Was that really an echo?  
  
George took a few more steps, each followed by a phantom thump. He shivered in between short breaths. The acoustics were distorted but it almost sounded as if something were following him, shadowing his steps.  
  
Pull yourself together.  
  
He shook his head, frustrated at how easily the urban horror stories had twisted his senses.  
  
The rhythmic click of his shoes was a little more subdued now that he was out of the main hall. The old bathrooms were boarded up and the corridor was very precarious. A large section of the roof had fallen in completely, leaving splintered wood and tiles piled up to the knees. George looked up through the gaping hole at the dark storm clouds that had started to gather outside. The cool air breezed past his face and gave him welcome relief from the damp musty stink.  
  
A miscoloured wall stood to his left, the brighter hued paint standing out more than the rest of the dinners dust stained walls. He rapped his knuckles against the wall, tensing a little at the loudness of the sound. There was little doubt that it was a plasterboard construct with an unmistakable hollowness behind it.  
  
_Sheesh. Hidden rooms, abductions, mutilations and malfunctioning animatronics; this place certainly deserves its reputation,_ George mused silently.  
  
The sound of his knuckles tapping against the old wall echoed through the restaurant as he searched for a weak spot. Perhaps this wasn't going to be as pointless a journey as he had originally thought.  
  
He looked over his shoulder at the pile of debris and spotted a large piece of timber support beam.  
  
"That'll do."  
  
He fetched the old, heavy wood, careful not to splinter the rough surface in his hands and stood in front of the fake wall with his makeshift tool. As he lined the head of the beam up for the swing the thick musty air in the old restaurant suddenly felt light, as if swallowed up in a breath of eager anticipation. Even the walls seemed to stretch like they were tensing up, waiting for the blow. George blinked the weird sensations away. Something in this place went beyond the usual unsettling sensations that haunted abandoned, lonely buildings and spaces. The old foundations were dripping in it; the rotting walls bled it out into the air. If he wasn't careful he'd probably start to hallucinate, if he wasn't already. As it was, he could imagine with disturbing vividness the sound of the metal feet on the vinyl tiles as the old machines chased him down, corned him, leering with their plastic glowing eyes and hideous toothy smiles before going in for the kill and mauling him to death.  
  
Knock it off!  
  
He pushed the feelings and the thoughts to the back of his mind where they waited taunting him, ready to creep forward again when he let his guard down.  
  
George tapped the old wood against the wall marking the spot, drew back for the swing and-  
  
"Don’t!"  
  
He jumped and yelped shamelessly, wheeling around to face a tall, soft faced man in coveralls.  
  
"Dam it Josh." He sucked in a couple of deep breaths, his heart hammering so hard he could feel the pulse in his neck bulge with every beat. "You scared the hell out of me.  
  
Josh Brooks smiled a sympathetic smile. "Sorry, didn't mean to."  
  
He gently took the wood that George was now gripping as if to wield as a weapon.  
  
"Wanted to stop you before you did something you'd regret," he gently set the wood down. "It's not a good idea to go smashing through walls in a place like this. You could bring the whole roof down on your head."  
  
"Not to mention asbestos was a popular friend of the eighties."  
  
Jennifer Brooks appeared behind her husband with a tool belt in one hand and a heavy looking mallet gripped tightly in the other.  
  
"Don't want you to end up breathing in a lung full of the stuff."  
  
Josh nodded in agreement as he cast his professional eye over the crumbling building.  
  
"It's probably best if you leave the demolishing to the professionals."  
  
George stepped back, not really listening. He had the sudden urge to turn tail and run far, far away from this dead place. Damn his employers and damn the money.  
  
"So, you find any paraphernalia for that horror attraction of yours?" He gave George a pat on the shoulder and went about examining the old structure with his wife.  
  
“No. Seems that whatever Fazbear Inc. did end up leaving behind has long since been stolen by the locals and probably sold off.”  
  
“Might be worth putting a couple of adds out then? See if anyone wants to turn the stuff in for a reward?”  
  
“Perhaps. Get the feeling my employers don’t want to shell out any more cash though” George said, very quickly loosing his enthusiasm for this job.  
  
He paced behind the two as they worked, wandering back and forth between the two restrooms, his mind turning over. He'd been to one of the other restaurants barley a few months back, one of the larger ones. Most of it had been demolished to be rebuilt as an electronics outlet. They’d managed to get a nice haul of Fazbear’s sordid history though, even some of the demolished building itself was horded for the new attraction. Despite himself he felt his mind turning back to murder and horror as if it were some drug steeling his mind away. He turned over the various articles he had read about horrific industrial accidents, the frightening abductions and the word of mouth whispers that told of ghosts and haunted machines. Did his feet trace the same path as one of the abducted kids all those years ago? Had he held something some ill fated employee had once touched?  
  
All the places tied to Fazbear Inc. seemed to hold a creeping presence as if the walls themselves were holding back their secrets. At first he’d shrugged it off, disregarded the growing unease as just a trick of his mind, a sewing together of his his private fears into reality, but here it was undeniable. Here, it truly felt as if all the horrors of Fazbear entertainment were lurking in the shadows, that all the twisted pain and suffering had condensed and stagnated into a presence of its own.  
  
He briefly entertained the idea of drifting back outside to wait until the others were done but his pride wouldn’t let him. He made his way back to the husband and wife team. Josh was diligently hammering away at a section of wall and Jen was supervising. He took in a breath, about of offer words of encouragement when Josh slammed the hammer into the wall again. No one had time to register the tear that halved the wall. Josh's face contorted into an expression of surprise and horror as the sound of cracking and tearing assaulted their ears. He tried to stop himself but his momentum had already seized him thrown him head first through the shattered wall and the rotting door beyond.  
  
Immediately George and Jennifer covered their noses and mouths, coughing and spluttering. Josh's own choked gagging could be heard from the dark of the hidden room. George dry wretched as the unmistakable stench of decay assailed his nose.  
  
"Holly hell! What is that smell?"  
  
George blinked through watering eyes, his vision blurred. He held his phone in front of him like a shield, the LED lighting up the dark cramped space.  
  
Josh was covered in dust, still picking himself up from the floor in the middle of the room. His fall had stirred a cloud of dust that tumbled around them in a thick eerie haze.  
  
Jennifer ran to her husband's side and helped him back to his feet.  
  
"That was close. What happened?" She asked as she dusted him down.  
  
"I-I don't know. It felt as if-" He trailed off looking nervously about the room, still a little shell shocked and embarrassed.  
  
George glanced at his friend before turning back to the revealed space. It looked like hell. Literally. Brown-black water dripped from open pipes that had rusted away. Years of water seepage had turned the walls a reddish brown, blistering the paint and giving it the disturbing appearance of dried, dead skin. The roof sagged dangerously at the centre and there were deranged, Pollockesque black splatters covering the wall and floor on one side of the room. You could be forgiven for thinking you were standing in the giant carcass of some dead beast.  
  
Even with his arm pressed over his nose and mouth, George had to swallow the stench of mould, damp and rot.  
  
"Damn, we were lucky." Jennifer looked around cautiously, breathing through her hand. "We should probably get some braces in that doorway.  
  
"Yeah," Josh said dully. "I- I checked the…” He drifted off. “This part has suffered even more than the rest of the building."  
  
George agreed. This room looked as if had been locked down tight years ago. He couldn’t help but wonder what particularly horrendous secrets had been buried here. Obviously it was something that even the notorious Fazbear Inc had wanted buried, sealed and forgotten. George felt the tickle of his growing unease.  
  
He panned his phone around the room, seeking the answer to his question with a due sense of trepidation. There were some old arcade games lined up against the far wall, surprisingly untouched by the years of weathering that the rest of the room had sustained. He should have been glad, there was quite a bit of money in those for him, but there was an unshakable feeling of uncertainty drowning the victory of his find. He wasn't really a religious man, or particularly sensitive person but there was some part of him that wanted to maintain a healthy respect and leave this place alone, let the disgusting walls hold their secrets till it all crumbled to dust.  
  
He walked over to one of the old games. The surface had been pretty heavily scarred but not by natures hand. Someone had vandalized the cutesy caricatures of Freddy and the smiling kids, decorating the games surface with disturbingly placed cuts and gashes that looked a little too deliberate for his liking.  
  
The desire to leave grew a little bit stronger.  
  
"Hey-"  
  
He stopped short. The vinyl floor warped beneath his feet, drooping as if it were sand. A brief second of confusion furrowed his brow as he sunk down into the foundations. Before he could act a loud bang rang out and he fell waist deep into the floor.  
  
Almost immediately the strong hands of his friends were wrapping around his arms.  
  
"Jeeze."  
  
"Pull him up, pull him up."  
  
George kicked out searching form some kind of purchase with his feet as Josh and Jennifer struggled with his weight. They scrambled desperately, heaving him from the gaping hole before all three of them fell to the floor panting heavily  
  
George crawled away from the rickety ground that had nearly claimed his legs and slumped forward coming face to face with two red dots staring at him from behind the old arcade games. Below them a wide toothy grin smiled through the darkness at his frightened, sweaty visage as if amused by his brush with catastrophe.  
  
George felt the air catch in his throat. Seizing his phone he threw light over the demonic thing in the shadows, his jaw dropping at the sight that greeted him.  
  
It sat there, staring from its hidden corner with its grotesque grin and dead, glass eyes. Time had mauled the old animatronic like a savage animal. The arms hung limp and lifeless, its legs bent at disturbing angles. Acrylic fur that had once been gold had dulled to a sickly yellow-brown with deep patches of black mould scattered across it whole body.  
  
"Whoa!"  
  
Jennifer gave a soft gasp as she saw what had captured his gaze. He shone the light so it bathed the entirety of the old machine in a ghostly white glow.  
  
For a second it looked as if something stirred beneath the glass eyes. George froze as realization sparked across numb neurons. Had it been a trick of the mind? He could have sworn light had danced across the polished orbs as if they had moved slightly.  
  
"Guess you've finally found what you've been looking for."  
  
George didn't reply. He just stared dumbly at the animatronic only vaguely aware that Josh and Jen were conversing behind him.  
  
"This whole place is ready to come down any second. If we want to get any of this stuff out we'll have to do it now."  
  
"I'll go get what we need from the truck, you see if you can't brace that door."  
  
Both Jen and Josh had already disappeared through the hole in the wall as George tentatively approached the old machine's resting place, unable to tear his eyes off it. He moved until he was standing on the other side of its gaze. The dead intensity of those eyes was more than a little unnerving.  
  
He had to cup his hand harder over his nose and mouth as he crouched down next to the machine. So this was one of the infamous Fazbear animatronics in all its original glory. Just like the arcade games it had somehow managed to remain mostly intact given its age and surroundings. He was going to have to do something about the smell though, possibly make a new skin for it too, but neither of those things would be hard to do.  
  
George frowned. He didn't recognize the character. It wasn't Bonnie, the colour was wrong and the proportions were too human. Perhaps it was a prototype or something of that ilk. He made a mental note to look it up when he got back to the office.  
  
"Lets hurry this up. If this damned place doesn't kill me the smell will."  
  
In a startling display of efficiency Jen and Josh had wheeled two of the arcade games out while George had been scrutinizing the old animatronic and were back for the third and final one. He couldn't take his eyes off the horrid thing. There was something so morbidly fascinating about it. As Josh and Jen worked like ants he stood staring dumbly at the animatronic. Like so much of the Fazbear world this simple, harmless object felt like it was hiding a wealth of secrets, a quiet story that no one could hear, or perhaps didn't want to hear. A tide of questions started to build as George's mind ran with the ambiguities and bizarreness of his new discovery.  
  
"Excuse us."  
  
George startled slightly as Josh suddenly stepped up beside him. He watched as Josh looked over the animatronic.  
  
“Well he doesn’t look good. But I reckon we could move him without too many problems.”  
  
Josh waved to his wife who handed over a flat harness that he wrapped under the animatronic’s arms. With light, calculated tugs they pulled it from its resting place to the cart Jen had wheeled in. It flopped and lulled about like an unconscious body, the plastic eyes flashing blood red every time they caught the light, like some wild animal caught in a spotlight.  
  
"I wish it wouldn't do that! It's so unnerving," Jen hissed as she grabbed the legs.  
  
It was indeed off putting how alive the aged animatronic seemed even in its rotting, unanimated state. George shuddered. Their new friend was certainly going to sit well in the horror house.  
  
They tentatively navigated their way out of the room, crushing dry clumps of whatever was splashed across the floor into dust. George followed behind them at a healthy distance.  
  
As they staggered and tripped through the old restaurant the ominous feeling that lived in the walls seemed to melt away with their passing. As their footsteps faded, the old building dulled. The wood sagged, the colours muted and greyed. It seemed as if some unseen force had finally given the old building permission to die.  
  
George restrung the chain through the door handles and snapped the lock shut.The dark storm clouds now covered the sky and the first drops of light rain hit his forehead.  
  
He’d done it. He should have felt relieved that his hunt had finally come to an end, excited that he was almost free of this forsaken contract. He'd come out on top again and was about to reap the reward. He watched as Josh and Jen loaded the animatronic onto the back of their truck. So why couldn't he shake the feeling that he had just done something incredibly stupid.


	4. Dangerous Dreams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's implied murder and the death of a child at the end of this chapter. Even though it is not explicit I thought only fair to warn those who would like to avoid that kind of stuff.

Spring Bonnie stood on the stage, gazing out at his restaurant through shinning eyes, admiring the glow of afternoon rays cast across the main dinning space. The room was like a great warm hearth, the kitchen heat keeping the cool of evening at bay. Customers crammed themselves around tables, their chatter and laughter rising and falling as they carved through their meals. Above them, warm lights illuminated walls painted a summer colour of yellow; and beneath their feet, severely polished hardwood floors glistened like dark amber.

It was home. It was heaven. It was a dream.

Or, more accurately, it was a memory wrapped in a dream, both beautiful and comfortable in its design. It brought him a peaceful euphoria that had been missing during his long, lonely incarceration and it left him completely content to loose himself in the lucid dreamscape. 

The clock hands ticked over and they spilled through the doors like water through floodgates: twenty little bodies running up to the stage, jumping and punching the air with sticky fists.

Standing next to Spring Bonnie Fredbear blinked awake at the sound of young voices, swiveling his big muzzle from side to side with juddering movements.

“Sing a song Fred,” said the breathless girl at the front with blonde curls.

“It’s my birthday,” explained the rosy cheeked, round boy.

They crowded around the two mascots like hungry, squawking chicks in a nest. The cacophony and chaos could have numbed even the most stoic of souls but Spring Bonnie couldn’t have been happier, his only lament that the relentless march of time would inevitably steal the precious moment from him.

Music moved with him as the two animatronics performed for the happy little faces. They sung their familiar songs and repeated tired old phrases again and again, all for the enjoyment of their young audience.

Spring Bonnie watched it all play out as he always did, content to keep up the illusion of a mindless machine. It was an easy ruse and he was a master performer. Changing the script could force him back into his last nightmare, into the crushing loneliness that had haunted him for all those years. He really didn't want that.

Here and now though, everything was good and sweet.

The children cheered, sung and dashed about until the sun dipped behind the mountains, the sugar highs dried up and the tall people finally came to scoop up the little bodies that slumped in chairs and rested on laps. As the treacherous moon continued its slow trudge across the sky they slowly shuffled out into the night. The lights went dark, the smells of cooking settled, Fredbear fell into his deep mechanical sleep and Spring Bonnie found himself alone again.

It didn’t take long for the silence and the all too familiar dark to haunt him.

He closed his eyes and fell back into the void of his mind, already aching to be back in his restaurant, surrounded by life. To perform was a compulsion, almost an addiction.

Coldness rolled through him as treacherous memories clawed through the dream haze, threatening to pull him back to that dark place that looked like his restaurant but wasn’t.

_What if these dreams are nothing more than a delirious malfunction?_

The lightning thought struck from the deepest recesses of his consciousness and triggered a spiral of horrible ideas. He pictured himself in that lonely forsaken room where time and entropy were tearing him apart, where his restful dreams were the last flares of living hope created by a dying mind. He saw his broken, rotten body alone and forgotten, his dead eyes staring blankly into the dark where he’d never had a chance to bring any more happiness to the world, never had the chance to say goodbye to Fred.

He shivered and for a selfish second wished that he wasn’t alone, that he should have company for his misery. He wondered if others had ever found themselves lost and alone in some forgotten place. Had they been saved from their darkness? What had happened to his old friend Fredbear? Had he been abandoned and locked in his own room too, or had he been spared that fate?

As if answering his confusion something stirred and he found himself surrounded by some nameless, indefinable space. Strange colours, shapes and images flittered around him like light across rippling water. Distracted from his morose musings he tentatively reached forward and tried to touch the kaleidoscopic shimmer.There was a shift, like the change of winds and he found himself back in his machine body standing on an unusual surface. It wasn’t smooth like the floors he was used to. It was coarse and black.

“Asphalt,” he reminded himself.

He looked at his hands, his arms, his legs. They were all new, like they had been so long ago. His fur was a pale, shimmering gold and his little purple bow tie was still wrapped around his neck. He stared at his feet. The shadow that stretched out from his toes was unrecognizable. His pointed rabbit ears were missing and the body was thin and tall. He held an arm out but the shadow remained as it was.

“Strange.”

As if complimenting the odd shadow he suddenly felt an unusual emptiness - or perhaps it was more of an openness. He lifted his head and gaped at the sight that greeted him. He was standing in the world beyond the windows and it was big, bigger than he could have ever imagined, a vast expanse of earth and sky that stretched on forever. Everywhere he looked there was more space, more sky, more earth.

He stood in silent awe taking it all in, each stretch of sprawling landscape sheering away the scale and grandeur of the halls and rooms that had been his home and his whole world. He looked across the familiar parking lot where countless families had come and gone. Beyond that, standing like a mirage, was a large building painted two shades of iris blue. Fredbear’s illustrated face smiled down at him from an illuminated, rooftop sign.

It took him a moment or too to recognize his home from the outside, only because it was so completely surreal and inexplicable for him to be on the other side of those walls. Lines upon lines of code bound him to the restaurant, making it impossible for him to step beyond the red wood doors without his mechanical limbs locking up. And yet here was, standing in a landscape he had never seen or touched, somehow meticulously recreated by his own mind.

Unlike the other dreams this wasn’t one of his memories. It couldn’t be. So what was it?

Wind whipped around him and he felt it in the bending of his ears and saw it rustling through his gold fur. It made the forest creak and sigh a long drawn out breath before stirring the grass and rolling off over the distant mountains.

“I wish you could see this Fred.”

He looked back up at the blue and red building wondering what was going on behind the closed doors. Had his old friend noticed his absence?

The lurking unease from his dark thoughts and curiosity nudged him forward onto a trodden, pebbled, weed-fringed path that led to and around the restaurant. He followed it.

Off somewhere, a car went by, the rumble of its engine fading as it disappeared into the distance. He looked around in time to see lights vanishing down the long road. There was such a distinct lack of life, light and activity in the measureless space. The buildings up the road looked empty. In the parking lot cars sat waiting for owners that were conspicuously absent and the trees tightly guarded whatever was hiding beyond their branches. There was the occasional dulled shout from inside his restaurant and the faint squares of light in the distance spoke of people getting ready to turn in for the night. But most of the surrounding landscape was devoid of human life.

It didn’t bother Spring Bonnie so much. He was feeling particularly brave now that he was in the shadow of his haven. All the certainty and strength he ever needed was within those walls.

He listened to the soft pad of his feet against concrete and the barking hum of crickets as he strolled leisurely along the path, the natural chorus of nature bringing him a sense of calm. It grew with each step, the closer to home the more profound it became, almost pulling him into a trance like state.

Dark clouds gathered above, a gentle drizzle starting to fall against leaves, grass and soil. Being so focused and blinkered in his trance like state he didn’t notice the turn of weather until patches of dark started to stain his fur and beads of water spotted his plastic nose. His snout turned to the heavens, little bullets of rain falling onto his face, pattering against his glass eyes.

“Oh, great.”

The parts of his mind that were brimming with technical knowhow agreed the rain was no friend to his electrical pulse or his metal skeleton. Water slapped against concrete, the thump of his feet matching the rapid patter as he picked up the pace, seeking sanctuary under the steady roof of Fredbear’s restaurant. Obviously the limitations of the machine still constrained him to the boundaries of his restaurant home in one way or another.

Crickets beat out their drumming chorus as the rain started to fall heavier and thicker, their noisy song now loud enough to wake the dead.

As water filled clouds darkened the sky and the evening sun slowly settled behind the mountains, leaving the long shadows to reach out over the landscape, a thick wall of fog slid down the road. The sighing wind between the leaves turned to an almost ear-splitting hiss as it hit Spring Bonnie from behind, swallowing him, the path and Fredbear’s in blinding white.

The crickets fell silent as the storm worsened and dense fog devoured the world.

Spring Bonnie stopped, undecided and nervous as he lost Fredbear’s to the billowing mist, his eyes sliding and blinking. Fear and dread once again draped themselves over his mind with an intimacy that was becoming uncomfortably familiar.

Advancing slowly he searched for the stairs that where inches from his toes not seconds ago. There was nothing but air. He pressed forward again, belief in his private world trembling as he found more nothing.

Not this. Not again, he thought.

The intangible menace of the dark world was back, that groping out of the darkness that crouching malignancy. There was no sanctuary from it, even out in the wilderness or in the halls of his restaurant. It was everywhere.

“Fred! Freadbear!” He called to his friend; it was all he could think to do.

Fredbear didn’t answer his cries but a soft sob did.

Spring Bonnie cocked his head to better hear the cry that rose and fell on the wind. By its sound he could tell it was a young girl, probably not older than seven and no younger than three. So he wasn’t alone after all. Someone else was lost here too.

He hesitated. The last of the day’s light was quickly disappearing and the rain wasn’t getting any lighter. The smell of damp clung to his fur as water soaked through the acrylic fabric. He stood frozen and alert, listening to it until it made his head ache. A deep and fundamental part of him cried along with the pitiful little sobs. 

_Why would a child be out here alone in this weather?_

  
His metal bones creaked with indecision. He couldn’t see beyond his snout and the crying was too faint to pinpoint.

Another sob and this time it was followed by whispered cry.

“Somebody, please help!”

He didn’t hesitate this time, chasing the sound through the wall of white.

Somewhere, far behind him, the forest whispered as the stirring wind pushed the mist open to reveal an ally lined with bins. A dark figure peeled itself from the shadows and he had to skid to a halt so he didn’t slam into it.

It was a little girl. She looked small and fragile, dressed in cloths that looked just a little too big. Long, wet, brown locks bobbed around her eyes as she sniffed back tears.

He was so focused on the sobbing little girl he didn’t notice the tall, unrecognizable shadow stretch out from beneath the tips of his rabbit paws.

The little girl’s shoulders heaved as she sobbed and her tears felt as heavy as the rain beating on his back. He knew he had to get her out of the storm, had to take her where it was safe.

“Hey there kiddo. What are you doing out here?” He put his hands on his knees, making himself smaller and spoke as if his voice could shatter the little person in front of him.

Her head lifted, her weeping stopped as she looked up at him so that he could see her face. Her skin was pearl pale, her eyes shadowy marble orbs. Black tears stained her cheeks and purple lips as she looked into and beyond Spring Bonnie.

A dark tear fell. She blinked and curled her arms around her shivering chest.

He stumbled back, blinking in confusion and shock. Something in the lost part of his mind screamed and stamped like an angry toddler. It was a scene he’d seen somewhere once before, but _where_?

“They locked me out.” Her eyes changed and she looked at her feet as if embarrassed. “Peter and his friends. Please don’t get them into trouble though…No, Michael wasn’t with them. I promise he wasn’t.”

Bonnie looked over his shoulder at the emptiness around him. She waddled over to him full of trust but still looking at her feet and continuing her conversation with no one.

“…Is daddy with you?”

She got close and offered up her hand for him to take. Spring Bonnie hesitated, confused. Again he scanned the ally but it was just the two of them and the long shadow. When he didn’t take her hand she looked up at him, squinting against the rain as if trying to see and listen hard.

He finally found his voice. “Who are you talking to little one?”

She just stared back her eyes moving side to side as her mind worked.

“What’s your name?” He tried again, moving so that his much larger frame sheltered her from the wind and rain. The storm beat down on both of them so relentlessly Spring Bonnie had to sweep back fur from his eyes. His cloth skin was soaked through and water ran off his nose and chin in thin streams. The rain felt as if were growing warmer, or perhaps it was something inside him. It didn’t matter. It was all uncomfortable, wrong and it pushed his desire to seek out shelter.

“Come on. Let’s go back inside and we’ll see if we can find your father.”

Perhaps it was the rain fogging his eyes but it looked as if the world around him was distorting, melting, like a fresh painting splashed with water. He turned his attention to the bins that warped under the rain, their sides sagging as if they were been crushed by some unseen weight. He stiffened. The walls of the restaurant had changed too. They weren’t those of Fredbear’s anymore. The iris blue had become a warm cream with a thick purple stripe around the lower half. They stretched into the dark giving the impression of a much larger building than his home.

“Where-?”

Thin streaks of colour ran down the new walls as plaster blistered and turned to sloppy sand. The twisted menace had started to tear apart this new dreamscape too.

Bonnie felt electricity snap and burn his insides, a static surge of fear coursing through his circuits.

“Come on. It’s not safe out here. I promise we’ll find your dad.” A quiver of desperation managed to sneak between his false bravado.

  
The water slapped against his head; it rolled over him weighing him down until his back ached. At his feet the asphalt drank up the rain with unnatural speed, the hard black surface squelching and sucking at their ankles as it turned to thick, wet clay.

The little girl stood unmoving, unaffected by the drowning wet which was dissolving their world.

Spring Bonnie couldn’t stand the beating of rain anymore. It was unbearable. He reached out to take her hand but the long shadow stretched out from beneath his feet and covered the little girl’s face. He could see her mouth fall open and her eyes bulge with equal parts fear and confusion. Her thin arms and legs kicked out at some intangible horror as it coiled around her. For an eternal second he watched as her little body thrashed about like a fish stranded on land. Then, in a blink, reality caught him. Spring Bonnie lashed out, grabbing at the air around her throat, trying to tear loose the force that was holding her.

The long shadow stretched further and her thrashing grew more violent.

The rain fell like thick syrup now, sticking to their bodies, stretching her cloths and his fur to the ground.

Spring Bonnie watched in abject horror as the little girl started to dissolve, her hair stretching like melting wax, the black tears running from her face in a torrent. Water webbed to the floor like rope, pinning them to the black clay that was slowly, painfully sucking them down. Spring Bonnie tried to readjust himself, tried to get his legs beneath him and his chest more upright but the strands of living water tightened like wire until he could feel his fur start to rip from its fabric anchor.

A black puddle billowed out beneath them as if it were bleeding up through the ground.

Bonnie was knee deep now, the little girl struggling to keep her face above the inky, black slop. He threw his arms into the mess, catching her body, trying to lift her out but it felt as if the weight of the world was pulling them down.

“No!”

A mouthful of black sludge slipped between his teeth as he struggled desperately to keep her head above the encroaching ink. He could taste it. It tasted like green, rotting meat and decay. It tasted like death.

It was death. The realization slammed into him with all the brutality of a gunshot. It was death and cold eternity and evil. Here, in his own head, where reason ended was a universal evil, waiting and wanting to tear apart anything foolish enough to get in the way of its insatiable hunger.

Spring Bonnie shrieked into the storm.

His joints popped and cables ripped but he didn’t let go, even as the hot goo slopped around his waist. He couldn’t let go. All that was left of the little girl above the frame of black slime was her porcelain white face. Tears veined across her cheeks and merged with the obsidian pool until the dark crept across her mouth, suffocating her.

“No, no, no!” he cried even as more of the slop splashed into his mouth.

Please don’t let her die, he thought.

Her marble eyes clouded over, becoming as white as her skin. She wasn’t looking at or through him anymore. She wasn’t seeing at all. He could feel her legs and arms fall limp and lifeless as the tip of her nose was submerged and the last strands of her hair were sucked under.

The weight in his arms vanished, the tiny limbs replaced with thick grease sliding between his fingers. He waded, chest deep, sloshing through the bog desperately feeling for the little body as more of him sunk beneath the surface.

She was gone.

The ground beneath his feet disappeared and his panic reached fever pitch, what was left of his mind plummeting into a frothing hysteria like a pebble dropped into a bottomless chasm. He kicked and thrashed trying to keep his head above the tar, just as the little girl had, but the dark mess drank away the rest of his strength. More of the foul stuff forced its way between the seams around his eyes and down the back of his throat. Metal innards bent and buckled as the tar filled his guts, reshaping everything it touched into new secret forms.

Strange sensations exploded across his body, violently swirling new feelings, rippling through and within him as he fought against the drowning dark pulling him down.

Something brushed against his ankle and he kicked at it, the action only serving to guide thin, reed like fingers to his shins. They crept up his legs, the monstrous talons so large they could wrap around his thighs. The grip was unshakeable. He could feel the fingers tense and shift, adjusting their purchase on him, ready to pull him under.

He choked on his own terror. Blackness would come swiftly, swallowing; and in one titanically freezing moment all would be concluded.

The tar sucked him down dangerously close to his face. All he could think of was the sad little girl and the warmth of the home he knew he’d now lost. Fred couldn’t save him, no one could. He was alone in the universe and for the first time in his life he truly understood what that meant.

In seconds the dark tide would rise to take his life away.

It didn't disappoint, covering his face as the creature clinging to his legs gave a ferocious tug, plummeting him into a new horrible reality that was wanting and waiting for anything foolish enough to get in the way of its insatiable hunger.


	5. In the company of Ghosts

George Hanley stared out through the cold evening windows, procrastinating. He inhaled a deep, relaxing breath, the thick chemical scent of grease and new plastic clinging to his nostrils as he looked out over his driveway. Josh and Jenifer were out by their truck, sharing a drink after unloading the last of their haul, while he sat alone in his workshop.

Well, he wasn’t completely alone. He looked over his shoulder at the animatronic laid out on his worktable like a cadaver on a gurney. Its arms hung limp either side of the table top, its rabbit head tilted up so its chin pointed to the ceiling in an almost sacrificial pose.

Even under daylight the old machine unsettled him. Beyond the decay and rot there was a disturbing quality to the mechanical construct. Even Josh and Jenifer had noticed the way its limbs lulled and flopped about with fluidity far too organic for a machine, especially one that had been left to the elements for so long.

He swivelled his chair around so he could get a better look at the rabbit mascot. The faux fur had sagged with age, hanging off its innards, giving the machine an emaciated appearance. The complicated internal machinery poked against its latex skin at strange angles and in odd places. Its joints and abdomen were tainted with dark stains where some catastrophic hydraulic leak had gushed from within.

Like blood, his treacherous mind thought.

The window beside him rattled as the sun began its slow decent while a storm wind blew in from the east.

He sighed, tossed the pliers he was holding onto the bench and slid off his chair. The old mascot, like everything tied to the Fazbear history, was a mystery wrapped in an enigma; an effigy of fading memories and decayed innocence.

He busied himself in the monotony of aimless cleaning, re-stacking tools, re-positioning the family pictures, shuffling around manuals and books, anything to avoid confronting the corpse-like thing on his worktable. He’d grown tired of exhuming Fazbear entrainment’s buried secrets. Even in the comfort of his workshop he felt haunted, imagining some spectre of evil looking out from behind glass eyes, picking him apart with a calculating intelligence. 

“Come on man. Grow the fuck up,” he snapped under his breath.

The unmoving animatronic smiled blithely up at the ceiling. 

George snatched up a box cutter and walked over to the table, unconsciously wielding it like a weapon.

The mechanical nightmare lay in the centre of his workshop, its hulking form covering the whole worktable and then some. George guessed it was seven feet tall, even taller if you counted the ears.

He heard his heart beating loudly and he was cold too as he moved around the body, the stench of mould hanging in the air so dense he breathed it in.

George pressed his eyes shut. So often he’d been confused by others needless fear of the uncanny machines he repaired. He rolled his eyes as they had refused to look at or share a room with the harmless constructs of metal and wire, but now he understood their unease too well. Dread had followed him back from that mausoleum of rotting memories, like a curse bound to a grave thief.

He continued to pace aimlessly around the machine. There was lots of work to do but he couldn’t decide where to start. The skin was too damaged for a simple patch job and he was reluctant to replace the whole suit of acrylic fur, though it had nothing to do with price, time or his lack of skill.

He focused himself. Metal gleamed as he held the sharp blade over rotting fabric and latex. The lower legs were the most obvious place to start. Water and damp had done their work and he was going to have to do his.He sunk the blade into the rubbery skin and hesitated, half expecting a pained shriek. The room was silent. Only his rushing blood rumbled in his ears as the latex crumbled under the pressure.

He sucked in another deep breath and continued his work. The cut was clean. From shin to the back of the knee it formed a neat crescent into which he slipped his fingers and gave a sharp tug. Fabric fur and latex tore away, shredding apart in his hands. With distracted, slow movements he dusted the crumbling latex from his palms, the flakes falling to the floor with the other rotting debris. He looked over the exposed inner workings, a nervous chuckle falling against his teeth.

The engineering marvel lying before him was both predictably boring and ingeniously complex, the product of either pure genius or utter madness. The yellowing fibreglass that shaped the leg was standard but the machinery it rested on was a fascinating web of joints, braces and metal, all bolted together in strange, unimaginable ways. A puzzle of reinforced ribbing stretched the length of the metal tibia, each ring bound together with iron-tight pins and latches.

George deconstructed the bizarre construct in his mind, bits and pieces of the puzzle starting to fall together as he followed the tibia to the ankle joints that nestled into each other like Matryoshka dolls. A hairline seam rand down the sides of the unusually thick metal skeleton as if it had been built to separate. 

A hungry curiosity suddenly pulled him into the mystery as he moved around the table and repeated the process with the other leg, only to find the same bizarre engineering.

George flicked on the light above the worktable and paused. The freshly exposed seam on the left leg was propped open, a tongue of black fabric poking out between the two halves of the shin.

“What the-“

Without looking away from the machine he pulled open one of the table draws, metal shavings falling from the lip like snow, and took out a flathead screwdriver. Delicately, he slipped the tip between the two bits of metal and pushed down, prying the metal apart. With a stressed groan the lower leg - its brackets, braces, and cables - slowly split apart, the endoskeleton neatly folding into and around itself with the smooth elegance of an opening flower. The engineer in him admired the beautiful ingenuity as the mass of metal slid away. He briefly entertained the idea of forcing the frame completely open but as the metal pushed back hard against his straining muscles he quickly dismissed it.

A dull ache stabbed his wrist and his hand started shaking as the machinery fought to pull back into its natural state. The involuntary tremble travelling up his wrist and into his arm as he struggled against the crushing metal that seemed determined to hold onto its secrets.

He couldn’t hold it any more.

With a catlike speed he lashed out his free hand and snapped up the piece of fabric. Metal slammed shut with a snap, catching the edge of his prize as brackets tightened into their comfortably closed position with a vicious zeal. Wires and cables stretched and slid over each other as if alive. The violent motions reverberating across the mascot’s frame making its limbs twitch in a disturbing mimicry of living spasms.

Popping metal and the puff of heavy breaths filled the room as both man and machine settled. George looked at his shaking hands and then at the gold mascot, disbelieving and suddenly very unsure of himself. It was unlike him to be so impulsive and reckless. He’d fallen so willingly into his in his own curiosity and it had almost cost him his fingers.

He opened his palm, his face pulling into a tight frown. A piece of black cotton fabric rested in his hand, stiff with age and frayed around the edges. It was a heavy, tightly stitched fabric, like the kind used to make overalls.

A pit opened up in his stomach.

“Well that’s us done for the day!” Josh poked his head around the workshop door. “You want us to grab you something from the corner store before we go?”

George stared intently at the fabric in his hand.

“George?”

He turned to look at Josh, his face slightly pale.

“What do you think this is?”

Josh looked at the strange expression on his friend’s face and then at the object in his outstretched hand. He gave a small, crooked smile and walked over to George, taking the piece of cloth and flipping it over.  
“It’s a bit of fabric,” he said with a hint of amusement in his voice, unsure as to what his friend was playing at.

“I found it inside that thing,” George stabbed an accusing finger at the animatronic, his voice soft and face deadly serious.

Josh looked between the engineer and the machine, trying to decode the insinuation.“And…”

“I found it inside it.” He gestured for Josh to take a look at the exposed leg.

His friend just shrugged, deciding to play along. He passed the piece of fabric back to George and walked over to the animatronic, his nose wrinkling at the musty stink as he looked over the mechanical skeleton. 

“Wow! Haven’t seen one like this before.”

George watched expectantly as the other man crouched down so that his nose was level with the metal skeleton.

“Don’t touch anything!”

Josh stiffened at his friend’s unusually harsh tone and leaned back slightly, tracing the wires with his eyes.

“Wow. Ok. This is really different. Looks like all this stuff is supposed to open up?”

Under different circumstances George would have been impressed, but he was too preoccupied with the implications of their discovery to muster anything but a distracted grunt.

“Why? Was it for maintenance or something?”

George shook his head even though Josh couldn’t see it. His eyes locked on the rotting machine as the pit in his stomach started to fill with bile. “No. It was made so someone could get inside and wear it.”

Now Josh spun around, disbelief etching itself across his face. “What? You mean like a costume?”

George nodded numbly. The two men looked at the web of interlocking metal.

“You’re telling me people actually got inside all that!” Now it was Josh’s turn to look pale.

“A guy who used to work at one of the restaurants tried to tell me about it,” George continued as if his friend hadn’t spoken. “He said people had been hurt in the springlock suits. I didn’t understand what he was talking about at the time.”

Josh looked at the uncomfortable expression on his friend’s face and his eyes widened. He stood bolt upright and took a couple of steps back from the thing on the table.

“You think this one…” 

George turned the piece of fabric over in his hands. “There’s more of it in there, along with something else I couldn’t make out.”

A cold silence descended across the room. Josh swallowed the dryness in his throat.

“W-were they ok?”

“Who?” George looked up from the fabric.

“The people who were hurt?”

Before George could stop himself an onslaught of horror stories swarmed his mind’s eye along with images of bloodstained metal and torn skin. His eyes flicked back to the dead animatronic.

“They survived, but one of them was a close call. They were badly scarred. One of them lost an arm.”

Josh nodded, his eyes dancing as his tried to connect the dots and fit all the loose ends together.“They would have had to cut it open to get the guy out though? This one couldn’t have be one of the ones involved in the accidents.”

George had to admit there was a degree of truth to that. “Perhaps.”

As the men chatted the animatronic grinned its perpetual grin, as if laughing at some secret, universal joke.

“Yeah,” Josh declared, running with the thin thread of reason he’d clasped, “they were probably in such a hurry to get rid of the damn things they just tossed them in some storage room as they were. It’s got to just be a cleaning cloth or something that was left in when they-“

“Walled it up in a secret room where no one would ever find it?” George finished. “Seems a bit suspicious don’t you think?”

Josh bit his bottom lip and winced.

“We both know that the good folks that ran the Fazbear franchise weren’t above sweeping incriminating evidence under the rug.”

“Yeah but surely – they wouldn’t – It couldn’t…”

A deep cold blew in from outside; cutting across their bare skin like blades of ice, and the bright lights washed their skin a few shades whiter.

“What are you going to do?” Josh’s voice had dipped to a mere whisper.

George looked over at the animatronic again. That strange chill was trickling down his spine and his chest was growing tight.

“I’m going to get a better look inside our friend here. Then, if it does turn out it played a part in one of those accidents or any of the other shit that happened at those accursed restaurants I’m going to have to turn it over to the authorities.”

“Could you imagine if we found something tied to the missing kids…” Josh gasped, a chilling hollowness in his eyes.

It was then George remembered his friend was a lifelong local. He would have been a child when the abductions had rocked the normally dull and uneventful town. Admittedly he’d considered asking Josh if he’d known any of the kids but now, seeing his friend lost in the echoes of childhood fears, he was glad he hadn’t. He knew all too well how little solace the strength and wisdom of adult life delivered when death lived in your memories. 

He stepped out of his own fear and placed a hand on Josh’s shoulder.

“Leave this with me. I’ll sort it out.”

“No, I’ll stay and help you out just in case.”

“You and Jen have helped me out enough today. I will take you up on your original offer though and put in an order for a beef burger with chips.”

“You sure?”

The relief in his friends voice made George smile.

“Yup. Like you said, it’s just as likely to be something completely harmless.”

Josh turned to leave, George following behind him.

“If you change your mind I’ll stay when we bring the food back.”

“Thanks man, appreciate it.”

The two men walked down the shapeless halls, completely quiet except for their footsteps.

Josh opened the front door and turned back to George.

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

Josh sighed and looked out at his truck where Jenifer stood.

“We doing a dinner run for you George?” She called.

“If you could Jen, and thanks again for today.”

She nodded with a smile and jumped in the pickup.

Josh still had an uncertainty about him though. “We'll only be thirty minutes.”

“Well I’ll try not to kill myself,” George joked, trying to shrug off the three close calls they’d had already. 

“Don’t even joke about that. It’s been a weird day. See you in thirty.”

“See you in thirty,” he patted Josh on the shoulder as he stepped out, watching him hop into the truck next to his wife, the nervous look still on his face.

George watched them for a second more then closed the door on Josh, the town and the world beyond. He was sealed away, alone with whatever horrors waited for him in his workshop. 

A new hour ticked over on his wrist watch and the hue of fire orange slowly bled across the sky. He forced himself back down the hall, stopping by a light switch to flick it on. The bulbs cast out candlelight warmth that mixed with the afternoon fire to paint the hall a deep red.

George rolled his shoulders and sniffed out his apprehension. He looked to his garage workshop where the blazing work lights beamed out from behind the half shut door.

Reluctantly he padded down the hall, listening to his shoes clack against the wood. As he neared the door the house seemed to get somewhat darker

Thirty minutes from now, he thought, George will be back if I need him. There’s nothing waiting for you in there that could be worse than the horrors life has already thrown at you. His own childhood memories threatened to surface but he beat them back. He wasn’t going to let himself fall apart now.

There was the softest thud from behind the workshop door.

He stopped; his head snapped up, he froze.

Silent seconds passed into a minute as he stood like a rabbit in the headlights.

“You’ve got to be kidding.” He softly announced to himself.

He swallowed and blinked, edging forward so that he could peek through the gap in the door.

The room was exactly as he had left it. There was no crouching menace hiding in the shadows, no ghosts waiting to torment him. He glared at the animatronic, its body frozen and lifeless. No machines waiting to maim him either.

He pushed through the door but froze again. More agonizing minutes ticked by as he just watched the frigid stillness. Nothing moved. And yet something felt out of place, as if there was a changing of the air. His skin prickled, the very atoms around him suddenly energized and stirring under the manipulation of invisible cosmic weaves. Across the room, toy eyes suddenly came to life. There was a whitening of their dull pupils as if a slow creeping spill of liquid frost were running over the glass spheres

George licked his lips and wiped the thin rim of perspiration from his brow.

“Alright. We’re going to do this again,” he muttered, the act of talking aloud somehow both comforting and humiliating.

“And this time..,” He paused half way toward the shelves stacked with clamps and metal rods. On the other side of the main workbench, lying face down on the otherwise immaculate floor was the silver framed picture of his wife and son.

Ignoring his nerves he walked over to the fallen picture, stared at it incredulously for a second then bent to pick it up. He turned it over. From behind web fractured glass Kevin and Lila stared through and past him. He moved to stand but the hairs on the back of his neck suddenly flared up and his heart exploded in his chest. The sound of the terrified beating drowning out the world.

He felt, rather than saw, something move behind him. The air shifted as it loomed over him, a dark shadow stretching until it left him crouched in the deep black of despair.

His mouth opened and closed silently as terror choked him.

“Please,” he finally managed to whisper.

His plea fell on deaf ears.

A cold sweat exploded over his body all at once as he spun around to face the monster. The eyes that met his weren’t toy eyes; they were filled with a living, raw malice. He felt his heart stop. He stared into the glass orbs and saw his own terrified face staring back. Death had become agonizingly material once more. Only this time it was staring at him through half lidded eyes, hungry to do him harm, practically salivating at the prospect of ending his life.

George opened his mouth but the scream never left his lips.


	6. Into The Void

He was running, his small feet pounding the soft dirt as he darted through wet, uncut grass, the blades slapping against his legs and soaking his soaks.

A whistle screamed out behind him and he ran faster, his heart beating in time with the thud of his feet as he leapt into the treeline beyond the field. The tall beech trees loomed over him, the dark of the canopy blocking the daylight so he became a shadow within the shadows. 

The forest shook lightly, the soft tap of leaf on leaf rolling in the wind as he slowed himself, wandering into the darkness where he felt so at home. He gave a quick glance over his shoulder, seeing the shadowed outlines of people. He slunk into the gloom, keeping his heart quiet and holding aching breaths behind sealed lips. The shadow people peered between the trunks and foliage, looking for him but seeing nothing. He smiled feeling powerful, turned and followed the path carved by his own feet.

He was only half way into the woods when he stopped suddenly. Lying across his path was a hare its body rigid with death. He stared at the little corpse for a moment then he reached out and snapped a stick from the sapling next to him, prodded the brown fur and looked into its white eyes.

He’d seen death before - lying in his grandfather’s coffin, in his sisters crib, in the mangled car shielded by police - death was inescapable and everywhere after all. And it fascinated him, watching people spend their lives either running from or running towards this cold eternity of nothingness, knowing it would probably remain this way until the universe folded itself into the same oblivion.

He shivered.

The shadow people had turned away and so he let himself leave the forest. The dead hare followed him. He smelt it over the fresh cut grass, saw it in the dead things hanging in the butcher's window. Rotting fur and dead white eyes were suddenly all around him, even in the recesses of his deepest dreams. He found himself returning, day after day, to try and figure out how and why it was buried so deep in his thoughts. And every day that he returned it laced its way, inch by inch, through his grey matter while the body in the forest fell apart, bit by bit. He watch as flora, fauna, fungus and bacteria began to slowly take apart the little corpse. It was an enchanting spectacle, watching life cannibalizing itself, siphoning and recycling its dead flesh into raw energy and new forms. For the first time he saw life and death joined into one seamless whole. Even as the last of its ivory white bones were eaten and lost beneath the wet earth death lived in his mind, the smell and rot as clear as the day he had discovered it. Bright young eyes watched tufts of fur tossed about by the wind and he realized as long as he lived the little corpse would remain in this world, alive in the sparks and chemicals of his mind. That excited him and opened something up within. It gifted his young mind a purpose and drive so consuming that the veil was lifted from the world, the web of creation and destruction, life and death, was all he was able to see.

It would be nice, he thought, to be a spider on that web.


	7. The Rabbit And The Bear

Spring Bonnie screamed back into awareness, kicking and thrashing about as the crushing dark finally released him. He sucked in a deep breath, raw nerves feeling everything including odd and unfamiliar sensations deep within as he flailed about disorientated and confused.   
  
His elbow struck something solid but soft and it grounded him. He stopped flailing, his muscles and hands trembling uncontrollably as he studied his new surroundings. The small space was all leather, levers, seats and glass.   
  
_I’m in a car_ , he realized, leaning into the driver’s seat of a Chevrolet Chevell.   
  
_I’m in **my** car_.  
  
That thought made him pause as he trapped panicked gasps at the back of his throat. He shivered a new kind of shiver as his wetware organised giddy abstraction into living perception. Organic senses bristled. He felt his tongue move behind perfect white teeth. He smelt sweat and new fabric through delicate nostrils, felt the rhythmic beating of his special heart like the thrum of a motor.   
  
A flash of movement caught his eyes. A gold haired, wide-eyed man stared back at him from the review mirror. His face was pale and he looked as if he had just dragged himself from a cold sea. He touched his cheek and the man in the mirror did the same. This reflection didn’t speak to him though and the face looking back at him reflected only his quiet fear.   
  
Sky blue eyes turned down to look over his new flesh body with a stunned curiosity. He stretched his fingers and flexed his muscles, his body responded, twitching and shivering. He moved down to his purple shirt and the black-bold letters stitched which where stitched above his breast pocket.   
  
SECURITY.   
  
The word tumbled over and over in his head, reeling him back to thoughts of the little crying girl.   
  
His body went cold. His mouth trembled.  
  
Her desperate cries pulled him apart as the nightmare replayed over and over, caught in the gears of his mind. The phantom weight of her body still tingled across his arms as he reached forward and gripped the steering wheel so tight his knuckles turned white.   
  
He had not been able to keep her safe from danger. He had not protected her from the shadow. Was that why he had been given this new form and purpose? Was it a means to atone for his failure?  
  
Hot mucus slid up the back of his throat and he shuddered at the strange sensation, his head falling down to rest on his outstretched arms.   
  
The smell and the feel of that horrible world was still vivid, that writhing cold, with its atmosphere of silent cruelty and the air full of pain. It planted poisonous reminders of lifeless little limbs and drowning gulps between his tired musings.   
  
“No.”   
  
He pressed his forehead into his arms as if crushing the thoughts. She was here with him too. She had to be. If the dark had spat him out it would have done the same with her. She was out there somewhere, waiting for him to find her and keep her safe from the shapeless evil.  
  
Bonnie turned to look at the swirling mist that pressed against the glass. His pulse beat against his neck. There would be other terrors waiting for him out there.   
  
He reached out with a still trembling hand and fumbled with the door handle. As he moved something rattled softly and bumped up against his knee. A set of keys dangled from the ignition switch. There were six of them, all of odd design and metal hues, laced onto a silver ring,  
  
He took them in his hand, a hum like electricity growing in his head and his heart trembling, leaning him forward. It was a nostalgic cry and an ache for parts lost and forgotten. His eyes shut and quivered, the feeling growing until it was a fire, a burning strength that threatened to tear him apart. He yanked the keys free with a satisfied exhale. A sense of completeness shuddered through his arm and across his body. They felt light in his hand and the untarnished metal glittered like treasures. He turned them over feeling content but confused, a discordant déjà vu swirling through him so strong he began to feel like a visitor in his own skin.   
  
Bonnie sighed. He had neither the time nor the patience to decode this nightmare madness and there were more pressing worries. He flicked the keys into his palm and neatly stuffed them into one of his deep pockets.   
  
“Alright,” he heard himself say as his hand fell on the door handle.   
  
It opened with a click and the outside cold rushed in, washing away the sticky heat that clung to his body. He stepped out from the warmth of his sanctuary and blinked at the beads of mist gently settling on his body, taken back by how sharp and clear the world was through his shining, wet eyes.   
  
Guided by a ghost of an impulse he reached down to his hip, his hand finding a heavy-duty torch strapped securely to his belt. It had a comforting sturdiness to it and, like the keys, somehow felt like an extension of his body. He unstrapped it, a calm washing over him as he wielded it like a shield. It snapped on and a golden light was thrown out into the fog, parting the white so he could make out the tell tale markings of a parking lot.   
  
He took a few steps, blinking, shuffling. A weighty quiet muted the world around him. There were no crickets, no distant cars, not even the soft rumble of wind. Dry mist burnt his throat as he sucked in the dead air, living memories cringing at the sterile artificiality, the hairs on his arms rising. Each dreamscape was leading him even further down the rabbit hole. His gold light sliced through the air as he walked sightlessly across the crumbled asphalt, the soft slap of his shoes and click of metal on his belt sounding like thunder against the silence.   
  
He glanced over his shoulder and quickened his pace, the endless white undulating around him like a canvas stretched over a tossing sea. Mentally, he began picturing horrors siting behind the curtain, watching him, waiting for him to put a foot wrong. Unconsciously, he found himself tripping into a jog, relishing the fluidity of his new form as he pushed forward.   
  
Panic tightened his chest as the crunch of asphalt beneath his shoes morphed into the smooth slap of concrete. Mercifully the white sheet finally peeled back and he stumbled out onto a path, looking up at a building with familiar cream and purple walls. A shiver ran down his spine as the torch beam fell on the same dark space that he had been dragged from not moments ago. It sat empty with no sign of the rain scoured damage or his struggle. It looked perfectly banal.   
  
His heart sank. There was no sign or trace of her either.  
  
He cast his torch across the building. From this angle he could see it in all of its garish glory. It sat beside a strip mall, surrounded by empty cars. Above the entrance a brown bear with a teddy face grinned down at him, the halogen lit signage colouring the building a ghostly shade of pale.  
  
“Freddy Fazbear’s,” he read the glowing words out loud, a look of confusion crossing his face. Like the rest of this nightmare there were parts of the twisted scene he recognized and parts he didn’t. He shook off the growing déjà vu.   
  
A loud crash made him jump. He turned and pointed his flashlight in the direction of the sound. He listened. Another soft thud slapped across the air. There was defiantly someone or something else out here with him. His eyes narrowed at the shadows and his heart beat a little faster.   
  
The rustling grew louder. It was coming from behind the building.   
  
Spring Bonnie levelled his torch at the patch of earth that had swallowed him. The beam shivered as his hand trembled. He held his breath and skirted passed the dirt-splashed walls, following the sound, rounding the restaurant into a fenced off area where a line of overstuffed bins sat waiting to be emptied. Crudely tied to the mesh was a white sign with a harsh font stamped on its rusting surface.  
  
“Employees only.”  
  
He looked down at his uniform, at the badge suggesting his right of passage, feeling vindicated that this role had indeed been penned for him. The gate squealed as he flipped the latch and pushed it open.   
  
“Little one are you here?”   
  
He peered around the corner letting his flashlight guide the way as it pulled the shadows apart.   
  
The sight that greeted him made his heart stop.  
  
They unfolded from between the two dumpsters, stretching up and up as they stood to their full, monstrous heights. One of the horrid, mangled creatures slunk into the light, its flesh quivering as it spun around. It moved about on animal legs with a gliding ballet step, far too poised and balanced for a creature of its size. Hook like claws pulled close to its red matted fur as it sniffed the air with its long vulpine snout. The other monster fell in behind it as they shoved themselves between the bins. It had the body of a bear, each of its thick legs a piston of steel mesh, meat and wire. Metal popped and creaked from beneath its thick brown fur as it shuffled over to its companion. They moved with an unnatural blend of mechanical juddering and swift organic poise as they peered into the shadows between the trash, searching.   
  
Spring Bonnie froze. Were they looking for the little girl too?   
  
His hand tightened around the torch as the red monster reared up, the fabric around its stomach and girth pealing back to reveal an organic looking skeleton gleaming with a metallic sheen. Plastic tubes and wire were folded between thick ropes of muscle and sinew, the horrible amalgam of machine and living tissue glistening with an oily wet sheen.   
  
The grotesque sight lit a fuse in his mind, a blinding flash of memories exploding behind his eyes so that he was looking down his rabbit snout at dark red which was bleeding out across his gold fur.   
  
He choked out a stuttered gasp and stumbled back against the gate, the clash echoing across the stagnant nightmare.   
  
Two sets of red eyes snapped toward the sudden movement, their intense stares growing dark as they scrutinized his face and uniform.   
  
The bear swung its enormous frame around, light bouncing off its glass eyes as it lowered its nose to sniff in his direction. There was no juicy nose twitching in the wind though, just the skeletal muzzle of a grizzly bear morphing at the cheeks into a grease stained teddy face. Its lipless maw closed in a death grin as its big cartoon eyes looked at him, empty of any expression except that of hate and hunger.   
  
Spring Bonnie screamed as the bear hobbled forward. Desperate he wielded the only weapon he had. The flashlight’s beam caught the bear creature in the face. It froze and let out a violent hiss like steam gushing from metal pipes, its fur bristling as a strange shudder convulsed down its body. It crawled out from between the bins trying to escape the halo of light.   
  
Bonnie felt his mouth fall open as he recognized the mangled face snarling at him.  
  
“Freddy?”  
  
A long tongue uncoiled from between two rows of metal teeth, hydraulic fluids and saliva dripping from its ferociously large fangs. The hulking thing creeping toward him was far removed from the cartoonish mascot that adorned the building facade. Its drool dripped onto the cement floor with loud splats as it tried to focus in on its prey. Glittering metal claws and bared teeth spoke silently of the unspeakable things they were going to do to him. Those instruments of death would be the ending of everything he had known, everything he had been and everything he would be, see, hear or feel.  
  
Bonnie’s breaths became shallow and rapid.   
  
_Please._  
  
He wasn’t sure to whom he was begging in this barren, mockery of reality, the was no one to hear, no one to help him.

_You're the protector now and you're alone_ , that unhelpful part of him chided.   
  
He shoved the gate open and stumbled back, the light clink of keys at his hip graciously reminding him of the potential salvation sitting back in the mist. He glanced over his shoulder. The disorientating white night concealed anything that was more than a few feet from his nose. Sickly yellow street lamps marked the boundaries of the parking lot. They hovered in the churning fog like fireflies, looking so far away. In the time it would take him to reach the edge of the lot twisted Freddy or the fox would catch him and use those claws and teeth to unmake him in terrible ways.   
  
He stole a quick glance down the side of the building. Uncomfortable as it made him, Freddy Fazbear’s was his only option. If he could get inside there was a chance he’d be able to keep the monsters out.   
  
Adrenaline pumped into every inch of his body, his heart feeling heavy with blood as his pulse surged. He took a couple of delicate steps back pointing his torch at the creatures with laser like precision. The two monsters shuddered and arched their backs, hissing and snarling. They didn’t attack though. Captured in the light, they could only watch him with their angry red eyes.  
  
Bonnie took a few more shaky steps back. Islands of sweat formed under his arms and in his hand the torch started to grow slippery. He took a deep breath, his muscles tensing.  
  
 _Go. Now. Run!_   
  
He turned, pounding the concrete with long strides as he dashed down the side of the restaurant, a deep guttural growl chasing him as he scrabbled around the corner. The mist was waiting. Unable to stop in time he slammed into the blinding white, his lightning pace slowing as he threw out an arm to feel his way along the wall. Above him the pale light of the glowing Freddy sign beckoned to him like a flame to a moth. He followed it, finally arriving at a pair of blood red doors.   
  
He heard the pounding of paws and feet before he really heard them. He seized the door handles and pulled but they merely shook on their hinges as the lock held them closed.   
  
“Oh no.”  
  
Then he heard the real sound. The very real pound of heavy feet as something big shifted its mass. Bonnie looked over his shoulder. Two red dots glared silently at him through the mist. The bear wraith crept toward him slowly, giving fear the time it needed to blossom into terror, hope to despair. Its skull grin beamed as it watched Bonnie hopelessly fumble with his keys.   
  
Panic had numbed his body and overloaded his senses, the roar of blood through his head drowning out the click of the bear’s claws. He abandoned his clumsy struggle with the keys and turned back to the torch, throwing the light into the bear’s face. It froze but its toothy grin taunted him with his inevitable fate.   
  
Unseen by either Bonnie or the bear something stirred in the mist, watching them with a deep patience. It tore itself from the darkness with inhuman speed, moving across the walls of Freddy Fazbear’s like water over stone, intertwining itself with Bonnie’s shadow, the two parts becoming one bloated whole.   
  
The twisted Freddy prowled closer, the smell of its prey’s perspiration and the sight of his heart pounding through the purple fabric driving it mad with hunger. It lunged, its metal claws shredding gravel and stone, its body uncoiling and its giant maw opening to reveal rows and rows of razor teeth.   
  
Spring Bonnie instinctively fell to his knees. The creature’s tortured scream twisted around him as it leapt.   
  
The shadow behind Bonnie took shape and launched itself at the wraith.   
  
Spring Bonnie felt the air lift his hair as something brushed against him, and then, nothing.  
  
Uncoiling his aching muscles he spun to face the second strike but the bear was gone. Spirals of mist twirled where the air had wrapped the bear into the white void. The fox monster watched its companion and the shadowy mass disappear into the fog, its tail tucking between its legs.  
  
For a frantic second Bonnie just stared confused, listening to the sound of his heart and heavy breathing. He turned to the fox, frowning at the oily black tears rolling down its snout. The stunned pause snapped like an elastic band as the fox turned back to him its teeth glistening like knives. It folded its ears against its head and lowered itself for the pounce.   
  
The scratch of metal claws quickly kicked Spring Bonnie out of his daze and he lunged for the fog. The car was his only hope now.   
  
He darted across the parking lot, the angry clack of metal snapping at his heals.  
  
With a static roar, the fox wraith leapt into the air, flipping its body around to land gracefully at Bonnie’s side. He let loose his own hiss as he wheeled around to face it, the deadly dance dragging on as he scurried back through the fog, desperately searching for the polished silver grill and purple frame of his Chevrolet.   
  
_Where is it? Where is it?_  
  
Unable to tear his eyes from the advancing terror Bonnie resorted to counting the car spaces as he zigzagged through the parking lot, his dry eyes darting down to register another set of white lines on the cracked asphalt.   
  
Six, seven, eight,” he counted under his breath. “Nine.”   
  
He was so sure he had walked over nine spaces before.   
  
“Come on! Where are you?”  
  
In a moment of foolish desperation he tried to wave away the fog, the torchlight dropping from the fox’s glowing eyes. It only took a half beat of his running heart to realize his mistake, but it was a half beat too long. Something whistled through the air and struck him across the cheek, the warm spatter of blood showering across his face. Pain and shock sent him toppling back where luck found him in the cold metal that pressed into his back. Without turning from the beast he dropped his free hand and ran it across the smooth surface, his fingers slipping over and around the door handle.   
  
The fox monster cocked his head. For a moment fear, hate and confusion flowed between the creature and the man like a wild current of electricity until the pop of an opening lock split the air.   
  
The fox wraith hissed a threat but Bonnie ignored it. Terror bled from his wound, a mad look stirring behind his eyes. He ripped open the door and threw himself into the safety of the metal frame. With an elegant twist of arms and legs he slammed the door and jammed the keys into the ignition, the bark and rumble of the roaring engine surging through him, making him feel invincible. Strong headlights kicked on, blazing through the mist.  
  
The fox hesitated as it sized up the new threat and then quickly readjusted itself. An ear-splitting scream cracked across the empty space as the monster charged at the car.  
  
In a panic, Bonnie fumbled with the gears, throwing the car into reverse as the fox closed in. He stamped down on the accelerator and snapped the wheel around in a sharp turn. The car flew back with a speed that matched the beast’s, slamming into its legs.   
  
A series of loud metallic thumps bounced across the roof as the monster rolled over the car, its head slamming into metal, thudding down the front to slap against the asphalt with a ripe crack.   
  
Before the rest of its body could fall from the car Bonnie clicked the gear back into drive. Loosing none of its momentum, the purple Chevrolet shifted direction, neatly collecting the flailing monster as sped across the open lot, the V8 engine now an angry roar. Bonnie kept his foot down, the cream and purple walls filling the windshield as he raced toward the restaurant at a violent speed. At the last possible second he twisted the wheel. The fox wraith slid across the bonnet and fell in front of the wall, its body torn in two directions as the car careened past the building. With a sharp crack the beast’s body was yanked ruthlessly from the bonnet.   
  
Bonnie slammed on the breaks, the screech of tires lost beneath the monsters agonized shriek. The car slid to a stop. The engine settled into a steady purr. He looked to the review mirror.   
  
The monster’s broken body lay against the wall, its limbs twitching as it tried in vain to pull itself back together. A half mad chuckle slipped between Bonnie's shivering lips and he felt sick in his stomach. He pressed his face into his palms as if to tell himself how to breather again; be still, be calm… Then, once the shaking in his hands hand subsided, he reluctantly cut the ignition, an aching vulnerability finding him again in the quiet.   
  
Metal ticked and pinged as the cold night stole its heat, the soundscape matching the pins and needles dancing down his limbs. His courage slowly dissipated with the engine heat as he ambled over to the wraith, lost in his bewilderment.  
  
The monster was a pile of twisted metal, plastic and flesh lying in a pool of its own fluids. Within its chest he could hear the sighs and murmurs as the various parts of its body seized up and died, liquids spilling from shredded tubes, cables and veins snapping, everything shutting off forever. It twisted its broken neck to look at him. Thick oily tears ran down its cheeks, just like the little girl’s had.   
  
Tense uncertainty ate up the last of Spring Bonnie’s anger and excitement as he regarded his victim with a hollow stare. Another tear dripped from its muzzle, inking a secret page of a story he was blindly stumbling through like a fool. It was a cruel realization, one that made Bonnie’s mind turn over into a slow kind of new and frightened horror.   
  
_Put it out of its misery. It’s a kinder fate._ The invasive thought slammed into him like a bullet to the brain. His brows knitted together in confusion.   
  
“Is it?” he mumbled, still staring blankly at the fox.   
  
He reached for his torch, feeling it in his hand, heavy and sturdy as a hammer. He unclipped the strap and pulled it into a firm grip, the actions feeling dislocated and distant, as if he were a marionette being tugged about on invisible strings.  
  
The fox watched him, a look of tired resignation glowing dull in its one working eye.  
  
Bonnie felt himself kneel. He hovered the torch above the monsters head finding the target. He raised his arm and pictured himself smashing the limp things head in. Beating it over and over until steel bent and its glass eyes fell from its head. Laughter rolled from the deep of his chest and it was a lonely, blatant sound in the emptiness. It grew and grew as he stood on the sill of madness, a light tug from within pulling him back down into a stuttered sob.   
  
“I can’t,” he babbled, dropping his arm and wiping his mouth with his sleeve. “I can’t do it.”  
  
“Can’t do what?”  
  
Spring Bonnie wheeled around. The shadow from before was pulling itself together behind the curtain of mist, twisting in and around itself to form a familiar silhouette.   
  
“Fredbear!” Bonnie’s voice quivered slightly.   
  
The sickly yellow of the street lamps carved out the bulky silhouette of Bonnie’s old partner. His big smiling muzzle and pearl white teeth sparkled with their own sunny, pleasant glow; not even the night could steal the gold shimmer from the bear mascots fur. He stared down at the blond haired man clad in the purple and black security uniform. His brown plastic eyes sparkled serenely as his smile pulled so wide the tips of his sharp stud teeth began to poke over his rubber lips.  
  
“Hello night guard. I’ve been looking for you.”   
  
“Fred…” Bonnie looked up at his old friend with horror in his eyes, his jaw hanging agape. Shame weighted his body and a deep pain bloomed in him as something wet leaked from his eyes and ran down his cheek.   
  
“I…” his head suddenly felt as if it had emptied into his stomach. He staggered forward, exhaustion rolling his eyes back into his head and stealing his legs out from under him. A bulky arm shot out and coiled around his falling body, pulling him against soft, foam guts.   
  
Fredbear looked over the man in his arms, giving a soft tsk as he ran a stubby, plastic claw over the open gash on his cheek.   
  
“Didn’t go quite the way we planned did it old friend?” He turned to look at the broken fox, the smile creeping back over his muzzle.   
  
The old mascot propped the half conscious Bonnie up under his arms as he seized the wraith by its neck, ignoring the growl of protest. He turned and waddled back through the churning frost white night, everything seizing and slowing as if time itself had stilled and spun over into another time, a time between. From the top of the building Freddy Fazbear’s mug grinned down at the trail of red gore that gushed from the fox as Fredbear made his way back to the entrance. The sign flickered, buzzing like dying insects as the three figures slipped into the dark of Freddy Fazbear’s.  
  
Somewhere in the mist something sobbed.


	8. Letters For The Dead

It was raining again, a heavy unseasonal rain. It came by the tons, hammering the concrete and pummelling against brick relentlessly, flooding the streets of the dreary neighbourhood so that rivers ran down the gutters. Nothing dared to stir in the torrential downpour save for the occasional truck or car that braved the rushing waters.

At the short end of one of the lonely streets a shadowed, sodden figure trudged down the footpath, ankles caught in the undertow and eyes whipped by the wind. The dark figure was undeterred by the weather or the dark or the utter emptiness of their surroundings, striding with purpose toward the bland, white house sitting on the corner of the empty street. Even with the streetlights reduced to a dull glow under the rain fog the figure navigated this particular nowhere with ease. A single light flickering in the little house burned against the otherwise dark surroundings and it guided the striding shadow like a beacon.

The figure looked up from under his hood at the lit room behind the water polished glass. Wet strands of dark hair hung over his face but he didn’t brush them away. He marched passed the dead houses that lined the street, his shadowed face scanning the various letterboxes, some of which were stuffed with uncollected mail, some of which were empty and some of which were stripped of their numbers. This was indeed a place where people went to become lost and forgotten to the world.

He walked up to the overgrown grass that bordered the white house and hesitated for a second, staring long and hard at the red door, taking in the smell of wet earth while the rain and wind slapped against him. His shoulders slumped and for a moment he looked tired and fragile. Falling into deep thoughts his feet carried him forward without a conscious command. His hand reached from his jacket pocket and wrapped around the chipped bronze handle. It held there for a good minute or two before he shook his head and muttered quiet words to no one in particular. Water dripped from his cloths with rhythmic pats as he stood frozen in indecision, arm outstretched. Drunken laughter suddenly barked out from behind the sheet of rain and the figure whirled around, pulling the soaked hood forward to completely obscure his face. With one fluid motion he whipped a crinkled piece of paper from one of his pockets and stuffed it in the letterbox marked ten. Just as quickly as he’d appeared the figure leapt down the stairs and vanished into the rain and comfortable shadows with all the lost and forgotten things.

The door remained locked on the barren streets but back in the house the light still burned. Rain hammered against the glass, the elements trying to find a way in but unlike the rest of the squalid surroundings the white house held itself against the onslaught. Three cramped rooms were neatly kept, the perfectly made bed in the bedroom empty and cold. Well worn and loved furniture dotted the sparsely decorated space, the biggest and most loved the oak desk covered with notebooks, folders and photos. Sitting behind the old desk, lost in a restless sleep was its owner, a stocky man with a quiet look of loneliness about him. His arms were folded over his chest, rising and falling with his deep and steady breaths. Years of late nights, scribbling out blueprints or tinkering with tools had taught him to be just as comfortable in his vertical slumber.

His brow furrowed slightly, perspiration beading across his forehead. The rain that whipped against the windows and walls had followed him into his dreams, pelting against the roof, inescapable and drowning. It was a bell toll, always the same, always heralding the beginning of this particular nightmare.

The rain drummed and the shrill, agonized screams rang out, smothering the beating torture and cutting through his mind like a blade. He inhaled sharply, tasting dust before he broke into a run, his feet carrying him through the surroundings he used to know so well before they had grown cold to him.

The shrieks stopped but his pace grew faster. Weaving from one space to the next in the complete dark his toe struck something with a hollow thud. He barely had time to throw his arms beneath him before his full weight fell to the ground, whiplash throwing his teeth down on his tongue. The iron tang of blood slid over his gums and between his teeth as Freddy's decapitated head stared blankly up at his startled face. He shuddered a breath and looked around. The limbs of Freddy Bonnie, Chica and Foxy were strewn about him in a crash of debris, his beloved machines disassembled with a brutal, animalistic violence. As he stared dumbly at his shredded mascots a single drop of water struck his head with a cold slap. He jumped and looked up just in time for another drop to splatter against the corner of his glasses. His hands started to shake as a dawning horror tugged his gaze from the broken machines to the room at the end of the corridor. He didn't have time to mourn his old creations even though he had lost too much already.

A choked gurgle rattled out from the dark as his adrenaline-numb body picked him up on shaky legs. His sharp mind had already put together the horrid puzzle and he shuddered at the expectation of what was waiting for him in the dark.

The spinning in his head worsened as he stumbled forward and grabbed hold of the doorframe, squinting into the moonlit room.

It was worse than he imagined.

He saw red, sickening, gut churning red. Glistening webs of flesh were spattered across the wall and streaked across the ceiling. His eyes followed the blood to the crimson puddle on the floor and past that to the pitiful thing lying face down where it had managed to drag its broken body. He watched in stunned silence, hating himself, hating the thing on the ground and cursing the stars. He was on a mission of redemption but it was a cruel fate that had him standing here now.

It would be natural for him to have felt satisfaction or relief as he watched the wretched thing bleeding out, it seemed that the universe itself was expecting as much of him but his shaking body just sweated with abject horror. The sheer, guttural shock of violent death was something he could never embrace or celebrate and it was this, among other things, that made him so very different from the bloody monster clawing its way towards him.

Pained grunts and mad cries spewed out from behind the Golden Bonnie’s red smile as the creeping horror pulled itself apart with each lunge and kick of its only functioning leg. Raw, quivering flesh tore and bones grated as it squirmed across the floor with dying determination, creeping toward whatever non-existent salvation it sort.

He couldn’t stop the rise of hot sick at the back of his throat as he watched it pull itself apart with demented determination. It was in that moment he finally understood the relentless madness and saw the hell-fire of hate stripped of its mask and revealed in all its cruel glory.

He stepped back horrified; horrified at the inhumanity laid out before him; horrified at how it was all so neatly wrapped in such a perverse irony.

"It’s all caught up with you now."

The words had come out as a strained hiss and he regretted them as soon as they left his tongue.

It stopped crawling, the head of the old springlock suit lifting with an inhuman strength. As the neck rolled back the smiling maw cranked open slightly. Shadowed behind plastic teeth were blood-streaked cheeks and a familiar mouth pinned into a silent scream. Dark arterial blood vomited from gasping lungs as it looked, unseeing, into his eyes.

"H-e-n-"

The sounds were barley human.

He didn't think. He didn't need to. His fingers felt for the handle and in a blink he backed out of the room and slammed the door shut. Moments drummed by as he stood gripping the handle, his forehead resting against the grimy surface, the only sound his heavy distraught breaths.

A brutal thud against the door made him flinch.

Another thud and he flinched again. The pounding grew louder and more frenzied.

Sweaty palms slid over the handle as it slowly twisted from the other side. He gripped it with a grim determination, holding it with his whole body.

"I'm not letting you out," he half cried through gritted teeth.

Steel fingers scraped down metal with a teeth-grating screech as the last of the monsters life dribbled out under the door and touched the toes of his shoes.

The pressure on the handle released and so did his breath. For several still seconds he just stood watching the blood as it traced around the soles of his shoes. Carefully he uncurled his white knuckled hands, his arms still trembling with exertion as he let loose all his muscles. His instincts urged him to lean forward, so he did and forward again until his ringing ear rested firmly against the metal door. The soft but steady drip of blood was all he could hear. He swallowed the lump growing at the back of his throat and gingerly turned the handle.

A heavy hand fell through the narrow gap between door and frame, the gold fur stained red, the fingers curled by death.

His heart throbbed violently. Beneath the acrylic fur, beneath the machinery, a flesh hand lay broken. It was a hand that had taken his in many firm but friendly shakes, patted him on the back in celebration and even taken his shoulder in a soft consoling squeeze more than once. He cringed at the treacherous memories, washing them away with the chilling reminder of all the evil deeds those hands hand been busy with, the evil that had marked his own soul and stolen what was most precious to him.

With fevered disillusionment he bent over and picked up the twisted limb, feeling the weight of the body in the dark and the last bit of living warmth draining into the cold metal. He let it fall back into the shadow, closing the door, sealing away his past his sins and his curse.Tears burnt his eyes as he stepped back his gaze not leaving the locked door.

He'd have to bury this. All of it would have to be buried.

“I’m sorry,” he stepped back hoping she could hear him. A single tear ran down his cheek.

“I’m sorry,” he stepped back again, pleading to whatever divine power was willing to forgive him.

“I’m so sorry.“

“A bit too late for that,” a silky voice purred from behind him.

His body snapped taught, the hairs on his neck standing up. In an instant the fever dream had shed its stale old script, unwinding into a fresh chapter of horror. The world reeled as his blindly running eyes caught movement over his shoulder. The dark behind him shifted, its fake warmth masking an ice-cold malice as it slid close enough to barely ghost against him.

His heart dropped, his tongue drying.

The locked door was gone and he now stood in its place, the horrors held behind it now pressing down on his own back.

"Time has forsaken you. There is nothing left here but a lonely old man whose regrets have take the place of dreams."

Lacerated fingers crept into his terror frozen vision. With almost reverential elegance the bloody digits settled on his shoulder with all the delicateness a mother would treat a babe to.

“No.” He spat the word out between fearful gulps of air.

Another bleeding hand settled on his other shoulder, just as delicate, just as familiar and just as precariously close to his neck. He could feel the sticky wet seep through his shirt as the mutilated hands gave a cruel and playful squeeze, split skin peeling open over knuckle and bone exposing ripe tendons and muscle.

“My dearest Henry; you should’ve known better old friend."

He could feel the figure behind him lean in close, imagining the wicked smile across its bloody lips. He didn't dare turn around.

"I always come back.” The smooth voice didn’t loose any of its mirth as the last words dipped into a feral hiss.

Henry’s eyes shot open as he sat bolt upright, back in his little apartment with his familiar ghosts. His hand slapped against his shoulders wiping furiously at the phantom blood, his frantic flurrying only cut short as he stopped to stare at the clean skin of his palm. He let out a weighty sigh, pressed his palms together and brought them to his face in silent prayer, sliding them over his face and through his hair, cleansing himself of the night terrors.

The moon peeked through the veil of rain as he sat breathing heavily his face held in his hands.

"Get out of my head you monster," he mumbled into his hands.

Silver framed photos of a once happy family in different moments of life all smiled back silently at the old man as he fell back into his chair, the numb loneliness of his waking hours a reprieve from the demons nesting in his head.

A gentle knock from the front door made him tense. He stood and peered around the corner of his study, down the hall at the door.

“Who is it?” His breath held in his throat for a beat.

“It’s Mary! You've got some mail. It's getting ruined in the rain.”

A soggy envelope spat beneath the gap under the door.

“Thank you Marry,” his voice sounded hoarse and tired.

The sound of shoes slapping against soaked concrete dissolved into silence as he stood staring at the envelope from the doorway of his study. With a gentle sigh he slowly staggered down the hall and picked up the wet paper. He turned it over and cast a suspicious glance over the lack of address or any other identifying marks.

_Henry._

His old name had been scrawled on the front with a neat cursive and underlined. He tensed. Whoever had delivered this had done so personally and that should have been impossible. He'd gone to obscene lengths to hide himself away from the world so his mystery mailman was either exceptionally tenacious or they had been following him since the incident.

The envelope dissolved as he tore it open. A ragged piece of newspaper was all that was inside. He pulled it out and froze, a tight frown creasing his brow.

_Fazbear’s Fright: The horror attraction!_

_Local amusement park is getting ready to scare your socks off with a new attraction based on the unsolved mysteries of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. Featuring actual relics from the decades-old Pizzeria, this new attraction is guaranteed to bring back your childhood in the worst possible way!_

A gentle tremble started to seize his arms as eyes darted over the article. The tremble turned into a violent quiver as his hands balled into fists, crushing the newspaper. Despair and desperation smothered him as he turned and threw the crumpled article against the wall, a pained shout giving a voice to his weakness and exhaustion. He fell against the wall panting, a delicate sanity gently reminding him that he wasn't dreaming, this wasn't his nightmare. He laughed it off with a sad chuckle. The monster was right. This painful reality was his nightmare and he had been living it ever since that knock on his door all those years ago. The somber faces of the police officers and those haunting words that time had brutally stamped in his memory had marked the end of his life.

Henry stared at the crumpled paper, the echoes of his nightmare, his fear, anguish and anger all mixing together in his aching chest. His mouth set in a thin line and a glazed look rolled through his eyes as a distant but furious determination paired with his slipping sanity. He lifted himself from the wall with a renewed strength as he turned back to his study, his old hands longing to set on a new project after years of idle nothingness. This wasn’t going to be like any project he had indulged in during his younger years though, his purpose was not to build and his inspiration was not creation. He looked at one of the sun-bleached photos of his family and their smiling faces captured in a moment that he struggled to remember.

“Everything I ever did was for you.”

His chest burnt as the monster's cruel truths hung on the silence that answered his confession. Regret was his poison and it was distilled from a life which had sowed that which had reaped only the sorrow and loss of others. He sat down at his desk. It was time to change that. He wasn’t going to let what he had created stain this world anymore.


End file.
